


Electrostatic Attraction

by zooeyscigar



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Canon, and his relationships with all his people are important to him, look everyone's queer and poly because that's how i like it, look gansey's just in love with everyone okay, pre-OT5, the gangsey ends up a polycule, wherein a triad and a diad become two triads linked by a certain bisexual dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-10 12:06:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17425574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zooeyscigar/pseuds/zooeyscigar
Summary: Blue and Henry are off in Nicaragua, Adam's away at school, and Ronan and Gansey are left to their own devices.What could possibly go wrong?~~“At least they text,” Ronan said heavily. He didn’t mean it as a competition, especially since Blue and Henry had been gone almost two months straight already. But just the day before Ronan had resorted to actually texting the words: Miss you to Adam, and he’d only gotten a less-than-three in response, hours later.“He’s busy. That damned job.” Gansey half-shook his head in a disapproval he shared with Ronan. Adam’s work-study job drove them both up the wall.“And he needs his sleep,” Ronan said, dejectedly. “But I fucking miss him.”He never said that out loud. Especially not to Gansey, because it felt like the sentence “you could be at college with him if you’d done something about it” was always lurking just under the surface, and despite his explosive temper, Ronan really hated fighting with Gansey.But it was late, and neither of them had been sleeping well that week - bouts of insomnia and persistent nightmares keeping them both up till nearly dawn most nights - and Gansey’s back was to him, shoulders slumped.





	1. Affinity

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this over a year ago and finally got around to writing the epilogue, so now I feel ready to post it. 
> 
> Set post- the summer of the road trip (which in my mind is when Gansey/Blue/Henry becomes official)  
> Written before the Opal story came out, so don't take any of that into account. 
> 
> Thank you to [faerieoftara](https://faerieoftara.tumblr.com) and shakespeareishq ([rootingformephistopheles](https://rootingformephistopheles.tumblr.com)) for each of their betas, a year apart. I couldn't have gotten to this point without both of you.

Gansey was in the doorway, lit from three quarters back. The light from the bathroom sliced across his form, exposing his cheekbone, his unkempt hair, the wire rims of his glasses, the wide neck of his loose t-shirt, the folds in his baggy pj pants. 

Ronan bunched up his pillow behind his head and tugged his headphones down around his neck. It was after 3am but there was no point in stating the obvious, so Ronan waited to see if Gansey wanted to talk about  _ why _ he was awake at this hour. 

He just stood there, though. A stillness that implied pensiveness, but also could have been indecision. After half a minute, he turned and walked away. 

Ronan would have just shrugged and put his headphones back on if he’d heard the usual squeal of Gansey’s bedsprings as he got back into bed. But the silence coming from the main room felt lonely. And Ronan, though he’d never admit it, knew the feeling. 

He got out of bed and was completely unsurprised to find Gansey sitting on the floor facing his Henrietta replica. The thing that did raise his eyebrow was that Gansey’s hands were still and his gaze seemed unfocused. He didn’t even blink when Ronan sat on the bed close by and it creaked. 

“They’ve been gone a long time.” He said it matter-of-factly, but the stress on the vowels in the last two words betrayed him. Ronan could hear the petulance crawling up Gansey’s throat and watched him clench his teeth against it, jaw muscles bunching with the effort.

Henry had said he and Blue couldn’t ‘do Nicaragua’ in less than two months, if not longer, and Gansey had nodded at the time as if it made perfect sense for his girlfriend and boyfriend to be gone for so long. Privately, Ronan had had his doubts about the trip ever actually getting off the ground, but after much heated discussion about the relative merits of several Central and South American countries, the decision not to go to Venezuela as originally offered, and the flurry of planning and packing and last hurrahs and goodbyes had passed, Gansey had been left a bit dazed. His all-encompassing Glendower quest had ended and he’d graduated with honors, and though he’d earned his gap-year by framing a sufficiently impressive, albeit somewhat vague, proposal to his parents, he hadn’t actually found a new obsession to fall under the spell of yet. Not that there would ever be something like the Glendower quest again, but Gansey was clearly at loose ends. 

And Ronan was being a sulky bastard too, because Adam had headed back to college after his too-short fall break a couple weeks ago, and the Barns had felt so empty this time Ronan had quit it in a huff. He’d studiously ignored the grateful cast to Gansey’s eyes when he unceremoniously slouched back into Monmouth Manufacturing with Chainsaw on his shoulder.

But here they were. The ones left behind. 

Of course they’d done it to themselves. Neither had applied to colleges, one because he hadn’t expected to live that long, the other because he couldn’t be bothered. Gansey had made sincere but vague excuses to not join the Nicaragua trip, ones that had mostly to do with his gap-year project and how close his mother’s election was on the horizon, but Ronan knew that was all bullshit. Gansey didn’t want to leave his ley line, but he didn’t have a compelling reason to stay. Adam had basically said it would take a long time to recharge, and implied that there wasn’t really anything remarkable about it now that it was no longer frayed and fragile and holding a demon at bay. But this was where Gansey had died, twice, and where Noah was buried, and where his precious Glendower had been laid to rest, never to wake again. Ronan supposed Gansey just needed time to say goodbye. 

Though thinking about him moving on afterward sparked a jagged chill in Ronan’s belly that arced up his spine and scraped along his scalp. 

“At least they text,” Ronan said heavily. He didn’t mean it as a competition, especially since Blue and Henry had been gone almost two months straight already, and besides, Gansey preferred phone calls. But just the day before Ronan had resorted to actually texting the words:  _ Miss you _ to Adam, and he’d only gotten a less-than-three in response, hours later. 

“He’s busy. That damned job.” Gansey half-shook his head in a disapproval he shared with Ronan. Adam’s work-study job drove them both up the wall. 

“And he needs his sleep,” Ronan said, dejectedly. “But I fucking miss him.”

He never said that out loud. Especially not to Gansey, because it felt like the sentence “you could be at college with him if you’d done something about it” was always lurking just under the surface, and despite his short temper, Ronan really hated fighting with Gansey. 

But it was late, and neither of them had been sleeping well that week — bouts of insomnia and persistent nightmares keeping them both up till nearly dawn most nights — and Gansey’s back was to him, shoulders slumped. 

“I miss her voice,” he murmured.

“I miss his hands,” Ronan sighed.

“Henry’s laugh.”

“Adam’s smile.”

“Blue’s lips.” Gansey shifted position on the floor, his back nearly brushing Ronan’s knee.

“Adam’s...” None of the things Ronan could think of were even R rated, let alone the PG-13 rating that he tried to keep himself to in conversations with Gansey. Finally, he ended with, “his breath.”

Gansey looked up at him, head tilted at an odd, sideways angle, chin in the air, neck stretched long and pale. He let his head fall back onto Ronan’s knee and exhaled slowly. “Blue’s mouth.” 

“No repeats.” Ronan jiggled his knee slightly, making Gansey’s head sway. 

“I didn’t. But fine.  _ Henry’s _ lips.” 

He looked so soft like this, his mind elsewhere, his body relaxed, head supported, throat exposed, his own lips parted in a loose smile. 

Ronan reached out to brush Gansey’s usually well-coifed bangs out of his eyes, and Gansey let his eyelids slip shut, let Ronan run long fingers through his mussed hair, let a deep sigh escape him. 

“Adam’s fingers are perfect,” Ronan said absently, his own fingers still in Gansey’s hair. “Dunno if you’ve noticed.”

“No repeats,” Gansey said with a grin, eyes still closed. “But yeah, I have.”

Ronan’s hand stilled and Gansey blinked up at him. “I mean, I’ve noticed that  _ you  _ think so. Come on.” 

“Eyes on your own boyfriend, Dick.”

“I would if he wasn’t thousands of miles away.”

“Fair,” Ronan conceded. They sat in silence for a bit while Ronan idly considered the relative merits of their respective partners in an admittedly very biased way. “Though honestly, Henry’s fun and all, but he’s not a fucking magician.”

Gansey huffed in a way that was more amused than scoffing. “It  _ would _ take a magician to satisfy a magical being who can dream things out of thin air, I suppose.” His eyes were slitted but not shut, and there was a twitch around his mouth that caused the light caught in his pupils to dance. Ronan had to hold his breath for a moment.

When he could breathe again, he teased right back, “And it must take a king to harness the energy Blue carries around inside of her. Bet she’s a handful.”

Gansey’s smirk faded, but an indulgent smile took its place. “Ha. She keeps both Henry and me in line like a damned pro.” 

Unsure if they’d moved from skating on thin ice to trading war stories, Ronan looked away and muttered, “Adam’s good at that, too.”

Turning around to face Ronan more fully, until he was nearly seated between Ronan’s feet, Gansey nodded and said, “You seemed calmer when he was home for break. I figured it was being at the Barns and being happy.”

Ronan shrugged and didn’t look at Gansey. He couldn’t, when confessing. “Mostly. But also his touch soothes the itch in my blood.” 

Gansey took this in as if it weren’t soul-bearing, which helped Ronan breathe through the tightness in his chest. Gansey then leaned into Ronan’s field of vision, still very much close enough to touch, but not actually doing it. “Itching now?” 

“Always, when he’s gone.” Ronan glanced at Gansey, whose face betrayed no surprise, but also no pity, thank God. 

“Is that why you’ve taken up drinking again?”

“That’s mostly for the nightmares, but.” Ronan shrugged again. 

For once, it didn’t feel like Gansey was trying to bite back a disapproving comment. It was a relief, but it left Ronan feeling empty and somehow more alone.

He flopped back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling — or whatever beams high above could catch a ray of light in the darkness of late-night Monmouth — and wished for sleep to come. Even with nightmares, it was better than this. 

Driving would help with the itch, but there was no one to race, and he’d promised Adam not to be too stupid on the road just for the rush. 

He was taking in a huge breath to sigh dramatically before heading back to his bed when he felt Gansey’s weight on the mattress next to his left thigh, then his chest. The sad, resigned smile and the tired lines around Gansey’s eyes as he lay down made Ronan’s breath come out as a self-reproaching hiss. 

“I’ll let you sl—” 

Gansey’s hand on his forearm stopped him cold, and he stared silently as Gansey took off his glasses and laid them next to his phone at the top corner of the mattress. 

“Maybe we can help each other sleep.” It was rare for Gansey to ask for something without looking at the person he was asking, but then again, this wasn’t quite a question. 

Ronan swallowed and took a slow breath before speaking. “Here?”

“Yeah.” It was a sigh more than a word, and Gansey didn’t look up at him until he’d let it out. “Worth a try?” 

Giving one of his standard IDGAF shrugs that he knew at least Adam and Noah could see right through, Ronan lay back down on his back. 

Gansey was curled on his side, and they were both oriented sideways on the bed, and nothing about this seemed like it would work, but Ronan didn’t really care. The animal comfort of having someone he trusted beside him in bed was already allowing his muscles to relax, even as his heart still skipped along too quickly, unsure of what Gansey wanted, exactly. 

“C’mere,” Gansey mumbled. “You’re too long that way.”

He scooted ninety degrees and tugged Ronan around and up until his head was on a pillow, but their relative positions hadn’t changed, and Ronan couldn’t get over how awkward he felt lying in Gansey’s bed. 

He’d only ever done this once before, alone, right after he’d wrecked Gansey’s car and was in complete panic mode about whether he could dream a new one. He’d freaked out and broken some shit and then flopped onto Gansey’s bed and swore into a pillow until he was breathless and ran out of expletives. Which took a long time and a lot of energy. Then, exhausted, he’d just lain there and wondered if it was the end — if Gansey would ever forgive him or if he’d have to move out and lose his best friend. 

It had been a low point. Not that there hadn’t been lower, but that was a rough moment. 

And now here he was, commiserating with his friend about the fact that their respective partners were unavailable, but also planning on sleeping together —  _ next to _ each other — in the hope that it would help? Whose dumb idea was this, anyway? 

Ronan turned his head to look over at Gansey and tell him he was an idiot, but he was already kinda blissed out and sleepy, eyelids drooping, a soft smile on his lips, and Ronan remembered how little it took to make Gansey happy. Really, all he needed was for his friends to be okay. 

So Ronan smiled at him. 

Gansey’s eyes lit up, even as he seemed on the brink of sleep, and Ronan realized how rarely they shared moments like this. He didn’t look at Gansey like this. He gave Adam sweet smiles, and he winked at Blue. He looked like an idiot when he smiled at Matthew, though he felt like family should get a pass, which meant no one could make fun of how he was with Opal, either. But then again, even Adam almost never saw him when he was being sweet to Opal. That was private. 

But so was this. 

And Ronan’s heart rate kicked up a beat as Gansey’s eyes slid fully closed and his hand slipped over the sheets to cup Ronan’s left biceps.  

For one desperate moment, everything in Ronan’s head screamed that he was going to hell for wanting this so badly. But then he found his breath again and as the noise died down, everything else in him settled, too. His restlessness seemed to have taken flight and left him heavy and dull and unable to keep his eyes open.

His arm underneath Gansey’s hand was hot, as were his ears, but the persistent need to scratch off his own skin was much less noticeable. 

A breath, a silent prayer of thanks, and he turned onto his side facing Gansey. They both re-settled on the bed, adjusting knees and heads so there was just enough room, and Gansey’s hand on his arm found a new area of skin — and muscle and bone — to hold onto. 

And then... 

They both fucking slept. 

 

~~

 

In the morning, Gansey woke as he normally did, slowly, slowly, then real quick. All at once he was sitting up and his glasses were on, and the light was streaming through the tall windows, and Monmouth felt abruptly empty. 

So did his bed.

It took him a moment to remember why, and then his neck heated up at the shameless way he’d pleaded with Ronan to stay with him. 

The experiment seemed to have worked, though. Thankfully. He was more refreshed than he’d been for days, and he must have had pleasant dreams because he was in a better mood than he’d been since Blue and Henry left town too many weeks ago.

Except for the fact that Ronan was nowhere to be seen. 

Gansey checked his room, then looked out the windows to the parking lot for his car, but the former was empty and the latter full — or as full as it got without the shitbox and Henry’s Fisker. 

It was times like these when he missed Noah the most. Not just because Noah was so very good at keeping tabs on all of them that he was sort of like a spectral GPS, but because he was in their heads enough to know what to say to calm any fears that might spring up, especially around Ronan disappearing in the middle of the night. Noah would have been paying attention and would know if Ronan had left angry or not. He’d know that Gansey was feeling insecure and needed reassurance. He’d know that what had happened wasn’t something to be ashamed of, even if Ronan couldn’t bring himself to believe it, and he’d know that Gansey was working through some latent guilt about the whole thing, too. Noah, of all people, would understand. 

It’s not like Blue or Henry wouldn’t, though. That definitely wasn’t what Gansey was stressing about. Not that anything close to infidelity had happened anyway, but neither of his sweethearts believed in that sort of thing. Jealousy happened and keeping things from each other was frowned upon, but he’d talk to them soon and mention the sleeping situation and they’d be fine. 

It wasn’t really about Adam, either. Adam knew, like deeply  _ knew _ about the insomnia that cursed the residents of Monmouth Manufacturing, and he of all people wouldn’t begrudge them any sort of sleep if they could get it. And Gansey was pretty sure Adam was way past the time when he felt any sort of jealousy or left-outedness around Gansey and Ronan’s friendship. They’d fought that out enough by now, and at this point Adam had a type of closeness all his own with Ronan, one that Gansey would never achieve. 

But if Ronan’s car was here and he was not, then what Gansey had to worry about was his state of mind when he’d woken up earlier and where he might be taking out any unwanted feelings on unsuspecting inanimate objects. 

A deep sigh and a selfish wish for life to be easier flowed through him, even as he acknowledged that searching for Ronan these days was a thousand times less fraught than a few months ago, or a couple years before that. 

The history they had...

As he hauled open the door to the stairwell, he gave thanks for that history. He’d never had close friendships growing up. There were people to be charming but infinitely polite to — the children of his parents’ friends and his fellow students, fellow travelers on his worldwide journey, etc — who seemed to, genuinely or no, like him a good deal. But he’d learned not to bare his soul to anyone when none of them would believe him about the one thing that truly mattered — his rebirth. 

Ronan had listened. Ronan had believed. Everything in his life was truly impossible, half his family was a dream, and he himself had created a whole world from which literally  _ anything _ could be taken. Of course the two of them had looked at each other and seen kindred spirits. A resonance no one else could hear. Their ties of loyalty to the echoes of impossibility they saw in each other quickly bound them close, and then even closer when tragedy struck. And with Niall’s death, Gansey finally understood what the work of friendship was, and why it was not only necessary to sustain life, but to nourish it. Through that hardship, the roots of their relationship dug deep and wound around both of their hearts in unfathomable ways. There were few things Gansey would ever be as grateful for. 

Adam’s freedom. Blue’s love. Noah’s peace. Henry’s admiration. 

But Ronan’s loyalty... 

A curious rhythmic  _ ponking _ noise intruded on his thoughts while he descended the stairs, but then he turned and walked onto the ground level factory floor and the source of it became apparent. 

Ronan was standing ten feet away with a golf club and a half-full bucket of golf balls. He was using what looked like a large hex nut as a makeshift tee on the concrete floor, and with some sort of pitching club (fortunately for the windows it wasn’t a driver) he was lofting balls nearly to the rafters before they  _ ponked _ against the wall or floor. 

“Is that a lob wedge?” Gansey asked with ungovernable interest. It was not the first thing he’d wanted to say to Ronan this morning, but here they were.

Ronan only grunted as he lined up another shot and swung. The ball sailed high into the air, through the light shafts and the dust motes, nearly hitting the far-off ceiling, and managing to ricochet off of two separate rafters as it sailed back down to bounce its way to rolling along the floor. Ronan’s eyebrows were low and dissatisfied, and he tried again to achieve whatever inane goal he’d set himself — possibly, Gansey guessed, to lodge a ball up among the rafters. His own little ‘Kilroy was here’ mark on the place. 

At least this wasn’t one of those time-wasting games that left bruises or scabs across his body. 

At the risk of sounding intrusive — or indelicately bringing up the elephant in the room — Gansey ventured to say, “Did you sleep all right?”

Another grunt from Ronan as he lined himself up to the next ball. His form was magnificent, of course, though he would never have bothered to be on the Aglionby golf team. He’d have scoffed at the idea. But Gansey couldn’t get the image out of his head: Ronan, tall and lithe, in  _ white _ of all colors, striding across the green after sinking the tournament-winning ball, tossing the club to his caddy, who managed to not be deathly afraid of Chainsaw, perched watchfully on the golf bag. Gansey had to work hard not to chuckle. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, once Ronan had hit the ball up and away once more. He mentally applauded the all-around success of their experiment, but let the subject drop for now. “Have you eaten?” 

Ronan shrugged, then looked back at Gansey as he dug another ball out of the bucket, eyebrows high. “Why? You cooking?” 

It was a known fact that cooking at Monmouth was damned near impossible, as they were without a real kitchen. In all honesty they could do little more than heat up things in the microwave. The fanciest they got was toast, but that was only because Adam had found them a cheap toaster one Christmas. If anyone was in the mood to cook, they did it at Henry’s place or the Barns, since 300 Fox Way was always too crowded. ‘Family dinners’ with the five of them were always at the Barns because they had the place to themselves. 

“You inviting me over?” Gansey meant it as a joke, but Ronan gave him an inscrutably dark look before bending to set the ball on its tee. 

“We could  _ brunch _ ...” Ronan’s voice when pronouncing the word was thick with mockery, but for no other reason than he would never allow himself to suggest such a thing unironically, Gansey was sure of it.

Except that he  _ had _ been the one to suggest it.

“I’m all for it, honestly. Though I’d hate to interrupt...” Gansey waved his hand at Ronan’s little setup as if it were a serious pastime that deserved respect. 

Ronan addressed the ball for all the world like his next shot really would win him a tournament, then startled Gansey by calling loudly to Chainsaw. She had been unobtrusively perched on a large hanging lamp ten feet to their right and halfway to the ceiling but had launched herself into the air at his voice and was winging towards the rafters. A moment later he hit the ball in a perfect arc through the vacant space, and it seemed to slow at the top of its path until it hung there, ripe for Chainsaw to pluck it from the air and deposit it in the V of two beams in the center of the ceiling. 

Ronan turned around to flash triumphant eyes at Gansey, who whooped and stretched out his fist for Ronan to bump. The golf club slid home in the bag with a satisfying  _ thunk, _ and Ronan walked away from his little game with the stride of a champion, Chainsaw’s jubilant screech from the rafters echoing through the dingey space between them. 

Gansey’s heart was light and his spirits high as they climbed into the Pig. Ronan rolled down his window immediately, despite the chill in the air — or because of it — and Gansey followed suit. He wanted the crystal clear autumn day to penetrate every sense as they drove, which meant no sunglasses, either. Everything sharply defined and almost too bright, too chill, too blue and gold. Too loud, as well, what with the growl of the Pig’s engine and Ronan’s music blaring over the wind that buffeted their faces. 

He hadn’t felt this alive for a while — this immediacy and clarity and  _ joy _ had been missing recently, and he wondered, not for the first time, whether Blue’s battery had started to be able to recharge him now he was inextricably linked to Cabeswater, or at least to the ley line. Or maybe there was something to Adam’s theory that Gansey was now part  _ tir e e’lintes _ , as was Blue of course, and maybe they weren’t made to be solitary... 

Either way, neither Blue nor Cabeswater were here, just then. Only Ronan. The Greywaren. The magical creature who dreamed things into reality, and was sitting right then with his legs spread wide in the passenger seat of Gansey’s car, enjoying the speed and the light and the wind as much if not more than him. When Gansey downshifted on a turn, his hand on the gearshift nudged against Ronan’s knee, and glancing sideways Gansey caught Ronan looking, then giving his hand a decided nudge back. He couldn’t help grinning as he turned his attention back to the road ahead. It had been more than a year since they’d really had time like this just to themselves, and Gansey wanted to kick himself for moping around missing his partners instead of revelling in the opportunity to just be with Ronan.

With _ only  _ Ronan. Not Ronan and Adam, or Ronan-and-Adam as they’d now become. 

Gansey was well and truly happy for them both, but it was true that now it was a lot harder to get them alone anymore. Perhaps sometime soon Gansey needed to drive down to see Adam at college to have time with just him as well. 

But maybe not until he’d gotten his fill of Ronan. 

“I know I sounded somewhat pathetic last night, moaning about missing my partners, but I’m really glad you’re back in Monmouth for a bit. I’ve missed you as well.” 

Ronan glanced over at Gansey, brow furrowed, face guarded. “Not pathetic. Lonely.” He looked away out the window as he continued. “I thought you could use the company.”

Gansey smirked, unwilling to be deterred from the truth. “You can say it.” 

“Say what?” Ronan’s belligerence was all a front. 

“That  _ you _ could use the company, too. I won’t tell.” 

Ronan scoffed loudly, but nudged Gansey’s hand with his knee once more. “I  _ did _ get some sleep, it’s just that your bed gets so much sun in the morning.”

“You could have borrowed Blue’s eye mask...” 

The withering look Ronan tossed his way made Gansey laugh loudly into the wind. “I wouldn’t have told about that either,” he said with mock sincerity. 

“Are you...” Ronan pulled his knees together to pick at the rip in the black denim sheathing the left one. “Are you gonna tell them about last night?”

Gansey frowned. “Yeah? Why would I hide it from them? They’ll be glad to know we got some rest.” 

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t mean...” He’d tugged a thread of denim off the frayed edge and was winding it around his finger. “I was just checking. I’m gonna tell Adam too.”

“You think he’ll be okay with it? Like, in the future? Or...” Gansey wouldn’t ever ask for it again if Adam wasn’t fine with the idea, but right then he really didn’t want to have the solid comfort of Ronan’s body next to his taken away so soon. Unless of course Ronan didn’t want it anymore. The idea of that lodged sharply in Gansey’s chest.

Ronan shrugged and looked out the window, the end of a leather band from his wrist in his mouth. “I hope so. Sleeping alone sucks.”

And with that, Gansey could breathe again. 


	2. Valence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noah was in the room. 
> 
> No...
> 
> Gansey.
> 
> It was Gansey’s hand on his arm, on his forehead, Gansey’s soft voice in his ear.
> 
> “Shhh, I got you. You’re home. You didn’t bring it with you.” 
> 
> Ronan still couldn’t move his limbs, but he could swallow the anguish in his throat and blink back the tears in his eyes. Thank God the lights weren’t on.
> 
> “You want me to stay?”

_ Beaks and claws and feathers and unholy screeching. The sounds of tearing and bleeding, and pain upon agony upon torment. White hot terror. Screams. _

Darkness.

Blissful, silent darkness, which meant wakefulness. And stillness.

Noah was in the room. 

No...

_ Gansey. _

It was Gansey’s hand on his arm, on his forehead, Gansey’s soft voice in his ear.

“Shhh, I got you. You’re home. You didn’t bring it with you.” 

Ronan still couldn’t move his limbs, but he could swallow the anguish in his throat and blink back the tears in his eyes. Thank God the lights weren’t on.

“You want me to stay?” Gansey’s voice sounded so small. Almost as if he were asking permission instead of questioning what Ronan wanted. 

But God help him, Ronan wanted it.

He sighed jerkily and tried to nod. Gansey either understood or didn’t wait for an answer, and crawled in with him. Ronan was on his back, taking up most of the center of the bed, so Gansey didn’t have much room, which meant he was pressed right up against Ronan’s side. Ronan exhaled slowly to not let on how deeply he needed warmth and solidity right up against him like that. He’d gotten used to it, after all. 

Gansey felt nothing like Adam, though. Adam was slighter, a bit more boney, and by now had no compunction about crowding Ronan, or his weight being too heavy for Ronan to take. He wanted all of the contact, the fiercer the better, sometimes getting Adam to press his entire body down on top of Ronan’s, the heavy weight on his chest making it hard to breathe. Ronan revelled in it. 

But Gansey seemed to still be unsure about this, possibly a little uncomfortable. He was on the edge of the bed and holding his body so as not to put his weight on Ronan. It couldn’t be easy or relaxing. But he also had his hand on Ronan’s chest, over his heart, and the touch was already steadying him. Grounding him. Bringing him back from the brink. 

He let out a shuddery sob-like breath, and as his ability to move returned, he shivered and wiped the tears from his face. 

“You all right?” Gansey had barely finished the question when Ronan turned toward him and engulfed him in his arms, holding him close. 

“Oh.” It wasn’t a noise of awkwardness or surprise, but of understanding. It made Ronan cringe at being so seen. 

But he didn’t let go. 

After that first moment, Gansey relaxed into Ronan’s embrace, even found where his arms could fit around Ronan to return it. And then they just laid like that together, silent in the dark, their breathing slowing, hearts beating against each other. 

“I am now,” Ronan finally whispered in Gansey’s ear when the adrenaline from the nightmare had ebbed, the blackness seeping out of his veins and leaving him weak.

There was a momentary pause, then Gansey nodded, his hair tickling Ronan’s cheek, and he squeezed the back of Ronan’s neck. 

Ronan expected him to pull away after that but he just settled more firmly against Ronan’s frame and sighed as if preparing to sleep. 

“Were you awake?”

They were so close Ronan could nearly hear Gansey blink. He didn’t answer right away, but his shoulders twitched in the ghost of a shrug. “Even if I wasn’t, I’d have come when you cried out.”

The reassurance was sweet, but not what Ronan was looking for. He had no idea what time it was, but he knew it was late, and if Gansey was still awake when Ronan’s nightmare got loud, that was...  Well, it meant that their attempt at sleeping apart tonight was unsuccessful on both sides. The thought made his stomach flutter.

“Get some rest,” was all he could manage to say. He hoped to God Gansey could sleep like this, because Ronan was nowhere near ready to let go. Or to sleep, for that matter.

He lay there listening to Gansey’s breath even out and deepen, his body slowly getting heavier in Ronan’s arms and finally slipping from consciousness. He lay awake for a long time after, too, trying to parse out what was happening — what this was for each of them — and how exactly it would be best to broach the subject with Adam.

He and Gansey had been a sore spot for Adam before. Not recently, thank God, but that didn’t mean pressing on it wouldn’t bring up old hurts. 

And if he was being honest, Gansey was a sore spot for Ronan. Maybe not sore, but definitely tender. Gansey came into Ronan’s life at the exact right time to mean everything to him. They’d become close just as Ronan was starting to understand his powers and to guess his father’s secret. And then, in the wake of Niall’s death, Gansey was the only person Ronan had. His mother was nonfunctional, Declan was impossible, Matthew was inconsolable, and Ronan was going mad with grief and guilt. The pain was unbearable. Except when Gansey would help him bear it. Now that Gansey believed that it was the night horrors that tried to kill him and not Ronan himself, he’d never disabuse him of that assurance. But really, they’d only do in dreams what Ronan couldn’t bring himself to do in waking life, and it was all because of Gansey that Ronan didn’t go through with it. 

In other words, Gansey had been Ronan’s lifeline at the lowest time in his life. And then later, Gansey had even  _ died  _ to save his life. As much as he was in love with Adam — and he was, deeply — Gansey meant so much more to him than the word friend could ever encompass. Ronan would do anything for him. Any. Thing. 

Hell, he’d do anything for any of the squad. He’d proven that as often as necessary over the last year. But he owed Gansey his fucking life, and by extension, the life of his little brother. And this allegiance — this fealty — felt so different than the way that he and Adam were entwined. 

Adam was his partner. They were equals in ability and balanced in their powers, and even though it was still relatively new, their relationship felt grounded in the respect and admiration of people on the same footing. It was really fucking healthy for them, especially when they fought and could still figure out how to reconcile respectfully. Everything about their relationship felt solid and fortifying. 

But Gansey was.... _Gansey._

And Adam had his own relationship with Gansey to deal with, but Ronan  _ really _ didn’t want whatever this was — whatever feelings Ronan was now feeling which he’d been able to sublimate by not getting so physically close to Gansey before now — to sour anything between any of them. 

But definitely not between himself and Adam. 

He really needed to talk to his boyfriend soon. 

Sleep first.

 

~~

 

“Hey, hon. Just a heads up: Gansey called us a little bit ago and just, you know,  _ casually  _ mentioned that he gets much better rest when sleeping next to Ronan.”

“Oh. Interesting. So, who does Henry owe money to, then?”

“Well, that’s the question. He’s willing to pay whoever, but you’d said three weeks after break and I’d said two, and it’s two and a half, soo...” 

“Was it closest without going over, or...?”

“Nice try. I don’t think we specified. If we split it I’ll bring you back a fantastic souvenir.”

“Weren’t you going to do that anyway?”

“...Maybe. We miss you. I’m sure those idiots do too.”

“Yeah, I miss all of you, too, I’ve just been run ragged this week. Ronan’s been feeling neglected, I think. He actually texted me that he missed me.”

“Whoa.”

“I know. I need to call him.”

“I’m sure he’ll tell you right away.”   
  
“Me too. I’m just not sure how to respond. He’s so damned contrary.”

“You’ll know what to say. We all know they need to figure themselves out.”

“Yeah... Gansey didn’t say anything else?”

“Nope.”

“Huh. Okay. Thanks, dear.”

“Of course, hon. Henry’s blowing kisses...”

“...I’m rolling my eyes at him.”

“He says you’re cute when you do that. I’ll punch him in the arm for you.”

“Thanks. Then make him hug you for me.”

“Will do. Love you.”

“Yeah, you too. Be safe!”

“Always. Bye!”

“Bye.”

 

~~

 

It wasn’t too late to call. Not yet, anyway. Adam never got to bed before midnight even on a good night, after all. And if he was busy, Ronan could just leave a voice message. Not that he had any idea how to word one of those...

He finished off his second beer and tossed the can at the trash bin near the foot of his bed. It bounced off the rim and clattered to the floor. Ronan nearly drained a third can right then just to try again, but he knew he needed focus for this conversation. He wasn’t aiming for hazy, just the right amount of liquid courage. 

Before he could talk himself out of it, he picked up his phone and made it dial Adam’s number. Just as it picked up he wished desperately that Adam had let it go to voicemail. But then he heard Adam’s voice for the first time in too many days, and he melted back against his pillows with a goofy grin on his face.

“Hey, you.” Adam sounded pleased to hear from him. 

“Hey. How’s things?”

“Busy. Tiring. Engrossing. Sorry I haven’t been in touch.”

“It’s fine. You've got a lot going on. Are you busy right now?”

“Nah, almost done studying for the night.”

“You alone?”

“Why, is this conversation about to get not safe for work?”

Ronan scoffed, but his ears felt hot. “No, Jesus. I just wanted a little privacy...”

“What’s going on? Everything all right?” Adam’s Henrietta accent came out when he was either tired or being sweet. This was probably both of those put together. 

“Yeah. It’s stupid. Didn’t mean to make a big deal.”

“About what, hon?” Adam’s voice had shifted from curious to guarded, and Ronan kicked himself for bungling shit already.

“I’ve been, well, Gansey has...” He took a deep breath and started over. “The nightmares are back. You know I’m at Monmouth because the Barns is boring without you.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“And Gansey and I are both not sleeping much because... well who fucking knows why. We’re us, I guess. And...” Why was talking about shit so fucking hard? “The other night we sorta both fell asleep on his bed. And it was good. I mean, we slept well. Not as good as I sleep with you, but maybe that’s ‘cause you wear me out first...”

“Sweetheart, did you call to tell me you and Gansey shared a bed?” Adam’s voice was calm, but not in the way it was when he was trying to suppress his anger, or how he was when Cabeswater had most of his attention. Just sort of everyday calm. And patient. It wasn’t unheard of, but under the circumstances it was unsettling.

“Kinda. But that’s it. Except last night he stopped a nightmare before it got real bad and then stayed with me, and... I couldn’t let go of him.” He took a deep breath to slow his heartbeat. And to try to not sound like a fool. “You know when it’s bad and I need to hold onto you for a while? It was like that.”

“So, you help each other sleep and he comforts you after nightmares.”

“Yeah...” Ronan sighed. Adam was simplifying things, but maybe it really wasn’t that complicated. He seemed too nonchalant about it all though, given those had been things he’d done for Ronan until recently. “Basically. I guess.”

“Good. I’m glad he can help you, honey.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I hate not being there for you.”

Ronan’s chest tightened. Adam wasn’t supposed to take care of him, that wasn’t his job, but Ronan really hated not having him nearby. Everything was easier when they could tackle it together. He couldn’t keep himself from saying, “I fucking miss you, Adam.”

“I know, hon. I miss you, too. Miss your God damned face.”

“Miss your hands.”

“Miss your shoulders.”

“Your mouth.”

“Your eyes.”

“Your dick.”

There was a muffled choking sound, and when he spoke, Adam seemed to be swallowing a chuckle. “Who says romance is dead?”

Ronan smiled, wide and feral. Adam’s laugh was fucking gold and it warmed Ronan’s chest to hear it. “Look. I’m just being honest here. You’ve got a pretty fucking dick and I like it. I like all of you.”

“I like all of you, too. How’s Opal?”

“Come on,” Ronan huffed. “I turn the conversation dirty, and you ask about Opal?”

“I said I like all of you. Just checking in on the external parts. How’s Chainsaw, while we’re at it?”

“She’s fine. She’s with me at Monmouth. Opal’s at the Barns; she needs the space. I visit her every other day, make sure she hasn’t been chewing on the house. They both miss you, too. Opal growls when I tell her you won’t be back for a few more weeks. Chainsaw throws her name for you at me like a reproach, especially at bedtime.”

“Always? Or when you sleep with Gansey?”   


Ronan winced. It was a fair question, though the implication of guilt was hard to take. “That’s only happened twice, and once was because of a nightmare. Chainsaw’s an asshole, like, every night.”

“So what’s new? She’s  _ your _ dream, after all.”

“I’d be flipping you off right now if you could see it.”

“Thanks, hon. I love you, too.” Adam’s voice was both amused and indulgent. Ronan relished the sound.

And Adam didn’t really throw around the L word, so Ronan took its use as sincere. “Yeah?”

“Mhmm.” 

Ronan’s face and neck flushed hot at the fond sound. He settled back further into his pillows. “Good. Me too. You’re not freaked out about me and Gansey?”

“No, Ro. I think it’s good. Unless it’s freaking you out...?”

“No. I just don’t know what it is.”

“What it is, or what it could be?”

“Fuck.” Was his worry that obvious? Was his devotion? “I dunno. It’s nothing. It’s  _ Gansey. _ ”

“Well.... yeah. That’s what I mean.”

The idea that Adam could know Ronan’s feelings so deeply and yet not sound afraid of what this might mean did a fucking number on him. “No. I dunno.” Ronan took a deep breath and let it out quick. “I dunno.”

“Okay. Well, let me know if anything more than cuddling happens?”

“Duh. I— Wait. Is that...?”

“Permission, if you need it, yes. But just... let yourself figure out what you need, whatever that is. Okay?”

Ronan’s stomach flipped and butterflies exploded everywhere. He had no idea what this meant for him and Adam if he was this casual about someone else. But he also didn’t know what it meant for interacting with Gansey from now on. “Yeah. Thanks, babe. Wish you were here.”

“If I was there, you wouldn’t be doing this work.”

“No, it would just be a fuckton easier.”

There was a pause before Adam cautiously asked, “Really? Why?”

“Because I would know that whatever happened wasn’t because I miss you.”

“Oh. Yeah.” A pause, in which Ronan assumed Adam was considering possibilities. The silence cut through him. Then Adam calmly but seriously added, “Don’t do that.”

Inhaling hurt, but the pain was steadying. Ronan shut his eyes tight to say, “I don’t want to, but we’re both fucking lonely.”

“Not a good reason, hon.”

Adam was too calm for this, and Ronan was quietly falling apart under his skin, behind his teeth. He should have kept his mouth shut. “I know. I know. It’s fine. I just wish you were here. For a lot of reasons. That’s not a guilt trip, I swear, but... yeah.”

That was definitely too much. He bit his lips to stop himself from confessing any more.

“Yeah. I know. Me too. School without you and Gansey is fucking dumb.”

“Shut up.” Ronan knew school was exactly where Adam needed to be right now, and that he was flourishing there. Adam really didn’t need him, which was how it should be. “I bet there’s a Gansey every twenty feet out there. You’re lousy with them.”

“There are plenty of Richard Campbell Gansey The Thirds all over, but no one like our Gansey Boy.”

Ronan chuckled. “Yeah. Fair.” 

“Tell him I miss him, too, all right?” Adam’s tone was perfectly balanced between indifference and affection. 

Ronan smiled fondly and for once knew when not to poke. “Yeah. You gotta finish studying, huh?”

“Uh huh. Sorry, honey.” He sounded inattentive, as though he was anxious to get back to his notes, maybe already letting his eyes skim over them again.

“No, it’s fine. I’m fine.” It was the truth. Though, to be fair, truth was relative. “It was good to hear your voice, babe.”

“Yours too, Ro. Love you.”

Ronan would never get used to hearing Adam say it. His own voice was so small and soft when he replied, “Love you, too. Get some sleep.”

“You too. Both of you.”

“Thanks.”

He barely got the last word out and hung up right after because Adam’s last sentence tore at him. 

Everything in that conversation had gone where it shouldn’t have. Ronan had made shit sound like more than it was, and Adam had backed off because of it. He was far away, and Gansey was right here, and no matter how much Ronan told him he missed him, Adam was going to give Ronan space. 

Ronan didn’t want space. He wanted Adam. 

But he also needed to be close to Gansey. Especially at the moment, while he figured out what that meant. Adam was right about that: he had work to do. He just really didn’t want to do it alone.

And yet, when Gansey tapped lightly on his bedroom door later, Ronan pretended he didn’t hear. 


	3. Charge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gansey: R’s doing that thing where he’s being cagey. Anything I should know? You two doing okay?  
> Magician: Isn’t he always like that?   
> Gansey: Not since you. ;)   
> Magician: Ro and I are fine. How are you two doing?  
> Gansey: We’re fine, I think?  
> Magician: Why a question mark?  
> Gansey: Idk. He doesn’t want to sleep with me anymore.   
> Magician: You sure?

Gansey let his thumb run along his bottom lip and stared out the window at the low, afternoon light on the changing leaves. This time of year could be achingly glorious, but Gansey wasn’t seeing more than splotches of bright color.

He was focused on the problem at hand: Ronan’s sulky, misanthropic behavior. 

He’d locked himself away for the past day and a half and it was clear he hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, if any, because Gansey himself had been up and working on the model of Henrietta and could hear how restless Ronan was through the walls. 

Before dating Adam, Ronan had always kept to himself when something was bothering him — at least until he had a handle on it and could only mention it casually in passing. But lately he’d been more open with his thoughts and feelings, maybe because neither were as dark and fearsome as they used to be. 

So it felt strange to be on the outside of whatever was going on. Gansey wanted to believe that at least Ronan was talking to Adam, and he’d texted Adam to sort of halfway ask about it. The exchange was quick, but not very comforting. 

He looked down at his phone, hoping he’d missed something that would make things more clear:

Gansey: R’s doing that thing where he’s being cagey. Anything I should know? You two doing okay?  
Magician: Isn’t he always like that?   
Gansey: Not since you. ;)    
Magician: Ro and I are fine. How are you two doing?  
Gansey: We’re fine, I think?  
Magician: Why a question mark?  
Gansey: Idk. He doesn’t want to sleep with me anymore.   
Magician: You sure?   
Gansey: No?  
Magician: Check. I’d bet that’s why he’s being cagey.  
Magician: Sorry, got class. <3 u  
Gansey: <3 <3 <3

He couldn’t help smiling at Adam’s sign off. He was never so affectionate until Ronan. Or maybe it was just that he’d finally had enough time away from his parents and enough love from their little chosen Glendower-chasing family to have learned how to express his own feelings. Whatever it was, Gansey was infinitely grateful for it. He and Adam had fought so much less once he’d started to let himself feel safe expressing things other than anger. And Gansey himself didn’t feel like such a freak telling his friends how much he cared for them when they responded the same way. 

Well, close to the same way. 

Adam never used the word love, not with Gansey, or Blue or Henry. He reserved that for Ronan, and no one minded. He’d use hearts in text and reciprocated feelings without using the words, though he was still much more reticent to hug than the rest of them. 

And of course, Ronan was fierce in his expressions of love. Thoughtful with presents, not unwilling to let people know how he felt, and physically much freer. Blue almost always squeaked when Ronan hugged her, his embrace was so tight. The way he draped himself over Adam was charmingly effortless. He had no hesitancy touching Gansey — hands on shoulders, ruffling his hair, quick, fierce hugs, pats on the back. And now in bed he seemed to have no qualms about how much they touched, maybe because there was a certain level of contact he needed for comfort. And Gansey was fine with whatever he needed — any amount would be a good amount, but the more the merrier. Or, the more the cozier. And sleepier. 

Words were different for Ronan, though. He didn’t  _ not _ use them, he just used them in ways that belied their meaning — or at least belied the effect they had in conversation. Everything serious was a joke, and when he joked he teased, just up to the point of being mean but not over the line. Usually. Except recently, he’d been better about sincerity in his expressions, and privately Gansey and Henry and Blue had decided it was the result of a conversation with Adam about what can hurt even when we don’t mean it to. 

And since Adam had left for school, Ronan had been... quieter, but more open to talk. At least late at night. And Gansey was reticent to chalk it up completely to alcohol. 

There had been a moment very late last night when Ronan had ventured out of his room to go to the bathroom, and Gansey had hoped he’d stop to talk after, but he’d yawned the whole way back to his room, and Gansey had let him go. 

Gansey couldn’t live with himself when he asked for things from his friends that they didn’t want to give, no matter how much he might need them. 

Over the summer, Blue and Henry had ganged up on him to remind him that telling someone you loved them was not asking for anything at all, and that he had the right to say it whenever he wanted. Blue had promised she would do better about that as well (and of course Henry didn’t need motivation for that) and it had helped. But it had also spilled over into how he showed his love for Ronan and Adam, and in return, something had shifted slightly with each of them, in subtle ways he was still trying to parse, but mostly had to do with expressions of affection.

But Gansey, no matter how much he loved on his friends, never really expected reciprocation. So little things like Ronan’s hugs, or Adam’s little ‘<3 u’ still caught him unawares and brought heat to his cheeks. It was silly, and Henry never missed an opportunity to tease him for it, but he couldn’t help it. (Henry and Blue were a whole other level of unexpected surprise that he was grateful for, but that was another story.)

And of course Adam’s little textual sweetness wasn’t what Gansey needed to focus on right then. Ronan’s refusal to sleep together again, even after they’d both mentioned it to their partners, was. Especially if Adam seemed to think he still wanted it. Or something.

Oh, Ronan...

His Catholicism sometimes felt like a hostage negotiation. 

As the sun started to set, Gansey made up his mind. It was time to just go for it and see where the chips fell. Or the shrapnel... 

He knocked on Ronan’s door, and he kept knocking until he got an answer. 

“Fucking what.”

He opened the door about a foot and leaned into the room. “Nino’s. Now.” When Ronan just stared belligerently at him, he held up his car keys and added “You’re driving.”

Ronan frowned, but got up quickly, as if he didn’t want to tempt Gansey into changing his mind. 

A little thrill of satisfaction and apprehension ran up the back of Gansey’s neck as he passed off the keys and watched Ronan’s fingers close around them. 

Ronan had wrecked the original Pig, taking it on the road without permission, and afterward Gansey had made it abundantly clear to him that just because he  _ could  _ dream up another set of keys to drive it when Gansey wasn’t around, that didn’t mean he  _ should. _ In fact, Gansey was pretty sure Ronan believed that if he ever sat in the driver’s seat of the Pig again, Gansey would flay him alive. Though that was quite a more colorful outcome than Gansey himself would ever come up with. 

And yet, the moment he’d had the idea to let Ronan drive him to Nino’s in the Pig, it had seemed like the absolute best way to gauge where things lay. Not just best, but most gratifying for both of them. Because Ronan had also  _ dreamt _ the Pig back into existence, just pulled it from his mind — an entire  _ car _ — and it was  _ exactly  _ the same, down to the weird smell that came from the engine when it was driven too much. That feat boggled the mind in its impossibility and authenticity, and it caused a disturbing frisson to run through Gansey every time he thought about it. 

It was time — way past time — to celebrate this miracle by allowing the dreamer to drive the dream once again. 

The moment he started the car, Ronan revved the engine to a truly terrifying RPM, and Gansey nearly had a heart attack. 

“If you behave yourself on the way there, we can take the scenic route home.”

Ronan’s grin was nearly a grimace, all bared teeth and incendiary eyes. Gansey caught fire and whooped as Ronan peeled out of the parking lot, which in retrospect was not the way to ensure they arrived safely at the restaurant. But Ronan kept himself mostly in check, following the rules of the road, if not  _ quite _ the speed limit, as he not-so-subtly showed up Gansey’s own driving skill with his smooth-as-silk gear shifts and lane changes. All in all, it was a disconcertingly glorious sensory experience, being driven by his dreamer in his dream car in a way that made every inch of him feel acutely awake and alive. 

By the time they got to Nino’s, Gansey was abuzz with a ferocious joy that both warmed his solar plexus and wrapped it in knots. He stopped at the host’s station and pulled out his credit card, giving Ronan’s inquisitive eyebrow a roguish smile. 

“To go, please,” he said to the hostess with his most charming voice. 

That familiar old fire in Ronan’s eyes seemed to be set alight by the words. “To go where?”

“Wherever. Some dark, twisty road in the mountains, a straight, flat highway to an empty field, a new ley line we’ve never felt, you name it.” 

The moment the hostess left to give their order to the kitchen, Ronan stepped closer than necessary and murmured, “I’d go wherever you asked, could drive all night if you wanted, but...” he leaned in until he almost had Gansey shivering from how close those lips were to his ear. “The pizza would get cold.”

“For God’s sake, Lynch,” Gansey said with a laugh as he backed off, but only a few inches. The heat off Ronan’s skin was too inviting to leave its radius. “We’ll stop to eat on the way.”

The night had suddenly taken on new possibility, and Gansey had the reckless desire to make the most of it. He’d been playing with fire, handing Ronan the keys — he’d known that when it happened — but he’d forgotten how quickly Ronan’s fire made Gansey himself burn. This feeling wasn’t new, but it had been a while since he and Ronan had had the opportunity to pile fuel onto whatever they sparked in each other, and Gansey was savoring the warmth in the pit of his stomach in a way he hadn’t done for too long. 

This used to be how they were most of the time, back when Gansey’s fire was more easily accessible and subject to flares, and Ronan’s looks were more gleeful than dark. Gansey knew the odds of getting scorched were high tonight, but he didn’t let that stop him. Nor would he dream of slowing their momentum over the threat of cold pizza. They needed to move, and fast. Ronan looked like he couldn’t have sat still for love or money, not that he was lacking in either. 

They spoke quietly together about where to go while they waited for their order, debating relative merits of the different types of drives and what distance to travel. By the time the pizza came to them piping hot, Ronan, leather bracelet end between his teeth, had just floated the idea of leaving that moment on a multi-day road trip to the coast and back. 

As Gansey took the pizza and headed out the door, he tossed back over his shoulder, “Just take me some lonely place in the mountains, on a drive you know well, preferably one where I can see stars.”

Ronan grunted, whether in surprise or approval, Gansey couldn’t tell. 

They nearly had to do-si-do to get to the correct car doors, since they both had headed by default to the wrong ones. 

“Windows?” Ronan queried, as the Pig roared to life at his bidding.

“Down, to start,” Gansey replied, as he covered the pizza box in the back seat with a jacket in the hopes that it would keep warm.

“Music?”

“Loud.” 

“Speed?” Ronan glanced over with hope in his eyes, and Gansey smiled his appreciation. 

“Below ticket-worthy.” 

Ronan sneered, but in jest. Simply by asking, he’d known he wouldn’t get all he wanted on that front.

“As you wish,” he said, shifting into gear. 

Gansey’s heart leapt into his throat as Ronan pulled out into traffic, but it had very little to do with his handling of the vehicle. 

 

~~

 

It wasn’t so much driving the Pig that caused Ronan’s heart to beat so loudly in his ears — though that  _ was _ a glorious gift — it was Gansey watching him do it.

Ronan had driven him plenty in the beemer, so Gansey knew what he was like when he drove. He even knew what Ronan was like in racing mode, though he’d only witnessed it once and requested to never be made to experience it again. But Gansey didn’t know what Ronan was like behind the wheel of  _ The Pig, _ and for Ronan to get to show what he meant about letting the car live up to its potential power — its purpose — was... Well, it was exciting in ways that would normally bring him shame. 

But not tonight.

Tonight the fire that inflamed Ronan in body, mind, and heart was to be glorified, and it would be done on the open road — the devotional plane on which Ronan existed most fervently. And it seemed that something in the way he drove kindled a fire inside Gansey as well. His energy in the passenger seat was that of a molotov cocktail about to be thrown high into the air, and it intoxicated Ronan. 

This was the Gansey he loved best. This was  _ his _ Gansey — wild and free and unpredictable. His hand out the window grabbing at the wind tugged at Ronan’s heart as he hugged a curve. Everything was sharp — the turns in the road, the outlines of the trees bathed only in headlights, the wind buffeting the car inside and out, Gansey’s smile, every one of Ronan’s senses, the taste of joy and fear on the back of his tongue. 

Having Gansey’s eyes on him inside the car was a thousand times better than Kavinsky’s shaded gaze from the Mitsubishi, no matter how fast they went. And by better he meant more intense, more rewarding, and yes, more arousing than Kavinsky ever could have been. Turns out, channelling all your self-hatred and guilty desire into a person whose sole purpose in your life is to bring competition and danger is not only unhealthy, but ultimately unfulfilling. Especially when they are a psychopath with a deathwish. 

K had gotten one thing right, though — Ronan  _ was _ Gansey’s creature. But after all they’d been through, Ronan no longer carried any shame about that. He just quietly allowed himself to be a loyal admirer, a faithful right hand — a  _ fidus Achates, _ to quote Virgil — which only seemed right. And Gansey took Ronan’s fealty as his due without taking it for granted, and they dated other people whom they loved, and they carried on with life.

But tonight Ronan had Gansey all to himself, on the road, and Gansey seemed to need the space and the speed to stretch out of his skin and be more than himself. No, maybe just more himself — his  _ true _ self. Ronan didn’t have to know what prompted this necessity, he just had to get Gansey wherever he needed to be. Which at the moment was the top of the Blue Ridge Mountain range, where they could reach up and pluck the stars from the sky for dessert. If they left streaks of fire in their wake, who wouldn’t admire the view?

Not long after getting deep into the mountains, Ronan decided it was time to find a turnout along the road that gave them a clear view of the valley, its tiny lights mirroring those packing the dark sky. The smell of pizza had been tantalizing for miles and he wanted to focus on Gansey more than the road for a bit. They had all night to drive, after all. 

The moment they stopped, Gansey grabbed the pizza and hopped out of the car, leaving his door open. Ronan left the stereo on to let his thumping music spill out into the night air and headed around the back of the car to join Gansey. 

Except Gansey had left the pizza on the spoiler and was leaning on the railing, looking over the ledge of the mountain and out towards Henrietta. He seemed lost in his own world, so Ronan hopped up onto the trunk, letting his legs drape over the right fender, and opened the pizza box next to him. 

“Come get a piece before I eat it all,” he said, but Gansey wasn’t anywhere close to listening. In the dark he looked otherworldly, untouchable, his mind far away, engulfed in a princely aura that left him high above the mundanity of things like dinner. 

After a moment, Gansey replied, his voice startlingly immediate. “Not yet.” His focus was still on the night. 

“Your funeral,” Ronan said dismissively, unthinkingly, as he bit into his slice of pepperoni. 

“Not yet,” Gansey repeated, then laughed, loud and clear, and hurled his words out over the landscape, to the city lights, to the stars, to the night itself,  _ “Not yet!” _

Ronan’s heart soared like a firework along with Gansey’s whoop, high and fierce and explosive. Beautiful. A burst of joy in the night sky. A shout of defiance. A celebration. A promise.

Something cracked in Ronan’s chest and heat spilled out all across his skin, leaving a shiver in its wake.  _ “Never,”  _ he threw back with savage pride, and as the word echoed through the black trees around them Gansey turned to stalk back toward the car, face alight with a vicious, reckless joy. 

“God damned  _ right. _ ” 

He was a king, he was Cabeswater reborn, he was half of Ronan’s heart, and if there was anything true in this world, about this night, it was that Gansey would live forever. 

Gansey didn’t stop until his hips nearly brushed Ronan’s knees. This close, his eyes were shadowed by his brows, but pinpricks of light shone through the dark hollows. He looked ghostly. He looked immortal. He looked... 

Delectable. Gansey was  _ right there,  _ seemingly so very attainable, and yet... 

Ronan swallowed. There was no way to pull this perfect being down from his pedestal. As much as Ronan was drawn like a moth to flame, wasn’t the point of that metaphor not to touch? His hunger was devouring him from the inside out, but he’d rather starve than make a wrong move.

A moment of taut stillness passed, and all Ronan could offer was his slice of pizza. 

And Gansey turned into a boy again as he took it, slouching to the side, leaning his hip against the fender next to Ronan’s right knee. Ronan could feel the heat off Gansey’s very human body through his jeans. 

“I asked you to dream me the world, once. Do you remember?”

Ronan never forgot the nights wild Gansey appeared. He nodded. “I dreamt you this, instead.” He knocked on the roof of the Pig. 

Gansey’s lips twitched into a smile as he looked at the bite Ronan had taken out of the slice of pizza in his hand. “What do you get the boy who has everything? Something he already has.”

“Had. Past tense. I turned it back into the present. The future.” 

“And I thank you.” Gansey tipped his head as if to indicate a bow. “It gives me pleasure to drive it, and it’s a way to get wherever I want. But it’s still not the world.” 

“I’d dream you anything. Everything. You know that.” He wouldn’t dare say it, but in that moment nearly his whole being shouted:  _ All I have, all I am, is yours. _

He wouldn’t say it because it wasn’t quite true, and the last thing he’d do was lie to Gansey. He felt it strongly in this moment, but Adam still existed. Adam still had half his heart, and that didn’t change no matter how much of him was swayed by Gansey’s magnetism in this moment. For all his worship of Gansey, Ronan was still deeply devoted to and steadied by Adam, the magician-boy he loved so fiercely it hurt. 

“I do. I know. And I have everything I could possibly want already.” It wasn’t an apology, but a concession. And possibly an out.

Gansey took a bite of pizza and looked out over the valley as he chewed. It gave Ronan a moment to breathe, and to contemplate the perfection of Gansey’s profile — so patrician, so regal. Mr. President, who had surrounded himself with his cabinet. He dropped the pizza slice back in the box, then turned even further to the right to look at the dark road they’d traveled to get here. Ronan was distracted by his neck, skin pale in the moonlight, the hollow under his jaw so temptingly deep. Ronan reached out stroke it, but lost courage at the last moment and rested his hand lightly on Gansey’s shoulder.

He glanced back just as Ronan leaned in to murmur in his ear, “But what about the impossible? Do you want that too?”

Eyes wide, Gansey nodded and swallowed hard. The word came out on a whisper: “Always.” The explosion of warmth in Ronan’s chest must have flushed his cheeks because Gansey blinked, and stared, and set his jaw as if he’d made a decision.

Slowly, almost as if he wanted to make sure Ronan saw it coming, or maybe he was afraid of igniting something that he wasn’t sure how to control, Gansey stepped around Ronan’s knee and pressed too close until his hips were against the fender, torso wedged between Ronan’s legs. His head was the height of Ronan’s chest, face tilted up to his, eyes searching for something Ronan was too dizzy to fathom. 

“My Greywaren,” Gansey murmured softly. There was a heat to his words, especially the possessive, that Ronan had never heard before. It pulled at him from the deep crack flooding his chest with need.

He croaked in response, “My King.”

Gansey reached up to cup Ronan’s jaw, and Ronan bent down until their foreheads touched, the ache inside him like a wound of Fisher King proportions. It had always been there. It probably always would be. But maybe, just once, it could be soothed. Just for tonight. Just this moment...

With an inch between their mouths, Gansey hesitated. 

Disappointment stabbed cruelly through Ronan, and he wanted to spit out the acrid taste of it on his tongue. But Gansey didn’t pull away, he just hung there, close enough for breath, but too far for a caress. It was maddening.

“Christ. I won’t kill you, Gansey.”

“I know.” He dropped his hand and his gaze from Ronan’s chin to his chest. “But I won’t save you, Ronan.”

“I don’t want you to.” 

Gansey looked back up, eyes scanning Ronan’s face. Ronan took a shaky breath before adding, “I  _ don’t. _ I just want to feel whole.” 

A frown passed over Gansey’s face like a cloud over the moon. “Don’t you dare fill an Adam-shaped hole with me. I won’t let—”

_ “Never.”  _ Ronan’s vehemence echoed against the trees once again. “I can’t give you my whole world, because he’s a big part of it, but I can give you myself. Not like I haven’t done that already...”

Gansey huffed a soft laugh and pressed his forehead against Ronan’s, cupping the back of his neck with one hand. “What do you get the boy who has everything? Something he already has.”

“Always,” Ronan breathed, and closed the gap between their lips.


	4. Ionization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jesus,” Ronan gasped, and Gansey found himself nodding.
> 
> “Yeah.”
> 
> The pad of Ronan’s thumb ran along Gansey’s jaw to the corner of his mouth. “How...”
> 
> “I dunno, but everything fits now.”

Gansey didn’t breathe for a full minute. He was concentrating too hard on the brush and press of Ronan’s lips, the heat of his mouth, the prickle of Ronan's buzzed hair under his palm, the heat of Ronan's thighs around his waist...

Everything about this moment was so  _ right _ it hurt. Gansey’s skin felt scorched and his chest pounded for air every time blood rushed through his veins — or was that the bass from the Pig’s stereo thudding through his torso? 

Ronan’s hunger for his mouth was insatiable and Gansey let him take what he needed, revelling in every way in which they fit together, lips and teeth and tongue, fingers on skin over bone, flesh and fabric and heat. So much heat. 

Gansey shivered as Ronan’s fingertips brushed the back of his neck. Ronan’s swollen lips let a small, needy sound escape. Something that rattled inside Gansey’s chest finally slid into place and settled him, even though his stomach was in tatters, fluttering and snapping in the gale that was Ronan’s desire. 

Of course it would be fierce. There was no other way to be with Ronan. Either feed it or tame it, and after what he’d been through, Gansey didn’t have patience for anything that wasn’t  _ more _ . He was done being careful with his love, done corralling it into safe little pens, done denying how others burned and tamping his own fire down to embers. Safety was a myth and playing with fire felt  _ good,  _ and Gansey trusted Ronan with his  _ everything, _ let alone his fucking heart.

Letting this bonfire catch and burn could take out the whole mountainside. There was no real way to ensure it wouldn’t wreak havoc, but now they’d started it, they’d have to tend it and see what could come from its warmth.

Was it safe? Safe as life.

And sure as death, they could live through this conflagration together. 

Ronan was panting when Gansey finally came up for air, his eyes taking a moment to focus once he’d opened them. Ronan’s cheeks were flushed and his lips glistened, his eyes were dark pools ringed with blue, and his palm seared Gansey’s throat such that he was sure it would leave a mark. 

“Jesus,” Ronan gasped, and Gansey found himself nodding.

“Yeah.”

The pad of Ronan’s thumb ran along Gansey’s jaw to the corner of his mouth. “How...”

“I dunno, but everything fits now.” 

It wasn’t the right thing to say, but Gansey didn’t know how else to describe the feeling inside him. For the first time in a long time he didn’t feel like he was unraveling at the edges. Everything was in its place — Ronan was now ensconced in the exact right spot in his heart, and fit there like he was supposed to, not always almost slipping out and scaring Gansey half to death.

“Whole,” Ronan whispered as if in awe, eyes focused on Gansey’s bottom lip. 

He licked it from self-consciousness, and Ronan slid his thumb along the wet surface, a low growl emanating from deep within him. Or maybe it was the music. 

No, it was Ronan. Gansey could feel the vibration in his hand, which had grabbed hold of Ronan’s collar for support.

“Fuck, this is bad.”

Gansey blinked. “Bad?” He steeled himself for a bout of self-hate only a Catholic could inflict upon himself.

Ronan took a deep breath and sighed as he said, “Yeah. I don’t know what comes next.”

More blinking. Gansey was suddenly at a complete loss. “Surely you’ve gotten farther than this with Adam?”

“Of course,” Ronan scoffed. “But I also knew exactly what I wanted to do with him. I’d thought about it a  _ lot. _ ”

"What...?" If Ronan had never thought about this before, what the hell was Gansey  _ doing? _ Feeling very much at sea, Gansey let go of Ronan and took a step back. Ronan slid off the car as if tied to Gansey somehow, and his hands reached out for Gansey’s waist.

“Don’t...” He let his hands fall and amended, “If you need to stop, that’s fine. I just... I’m not ready to yet.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want you doing anything you’re uncomfortable with—”   


“I’m definitely not uncomfortable making out with you, Gansey,” Ronan said with a sharp smile — the one that always looked a little bit feral. 

Gansey’s heart landed a hard kick to his ribs and he reminded himself to breathe. “Then I don’t understand.”

Ronan looked down and clenched his fists at his sides. His dark lashes against the flush of his pale cheeks bathed in moonlight was more beautiful than it had any right to be. 

“I pined for Adam. I dreamt about him for months. But even my subconscious hasn’t let me believe I could ever have you.” Ronan’s eyes flicked up to Gansey’s and it was easy to read the mortification in them. 

He wanted to touch Ronan, caress his face, kiss his cheek, show him some care and to remind him that he had Gansey absolutely. But historically, the Ronan who shared secrets like this wasn’t the same one who could accept any sort of comfort. Gansey brushed his arm with the backs of his fingers, but didn’t attempt anything more, yet. He just let Ronan talk.

“I knew from day one you didn’t have time for me, not like this, and back then I still couldn’t really allow myself to think about people I wanted. Especially unattainable people like Richard Campbell Gansey III.” Ronan’s smile as he said Gansey’s full name was sweet with a side of mockery. It tugged Gansey in two directions, but the fondness won over the guilt.

“I wouldn't have guessed.”

“Of course you wouldn’t, you were too busy being a good friend.” Ronan dragged a finger down Gansey’s forearm, and when he reached the wrist, Gansey turned his hand over in invitation. Ronan didn’t grab hold, he just brushed his fingertips over Gansey’s palm. Gansey curled his own fingers to slow Ronan’s progress and he didn’t pull away, so they ended up just pressing the pads of their fingertips together. It was enough.

“After Dad died I was sure you'd never want me, not after seeing me like I was then, but at least you didn't leave. I was so fucking grateful I vowed I'd be there for you always, exactly how you needed me, and never ask for more. ‘Cause you didn't deserve that. And I didn't deserve you.”

Gansey opened his mouth to protest, but Ronan just shook his head, a sad smile on his beautiful lips.

“So I didn’t even let myself think about it. Ever, really. And then there was Adam. And then Blue. And that was it.” He shrugged a shoulder and looked out above Gansey’s head at the night sky. 

Tilting his head back, Gansey looked up too, and they stood silently staring at the sky, fingers curled around each other’s, until Gansey sighed and stepped forward into Ronan’s chest, sliding his arms around Ronan’s waist at the same time. Ronan wrapped his arms around Gansey’s shoulders and tucked Gansey’s head under his chin. 

From Inside the cocoon of warmth made by Ronan’s body, Gansey mumbled, “This is how I’ve always loved you, I just didn’t take the time to see it until recently.”

There was a pause like a held breath before Ronan asked, “How recently?” His voice rumbled through his throat directly into Gansey’s skull. 

Gansey’s face flushed hot and he made a little embarrassed noise as he pressed his face to the crook of Ronan’s neck. “Blue pointed it out to me this summer.” 

“She told you I liked you?” Ronan pulled back slightly and Gansey, shocked, looked up into his face.

“No, my God. She mentioned quite casually how obvious it was that  _ I _ liked  _ you. _ ” 

Ronan looked nonplussed for about half a second, then he burst into laughter, throwing his head back to share his mirth with the stars. Gansey swatted at his ass in protest, but not very hard.

“That’s fucking incredible. The most Gansey thing. Did she have to do all the work to get the two of you together, too?”

“No.” Gansey knew he sounded defensive, but he couldn’t help it. “But she did have to play Yenta to get Henry and me together.”

“Well  _ that  _ was obvious as hell.” Ronan was still chuckling, but then he squeezed Gansey a little tighter, so he didn’t really care. “I bet it was at Henry’s insistence.”

“No bet. You know it was.” Gansey smiled into Ronan’s shoulder as he continued to snicker. 

“Hey,” Ronan said after he’d expressed his amusement fully. Gansey looked up at him again, marvelling at the pallor of his skin in the moonlight, his head ringed with stars. “Kiss me again?”

Gansey smiled indulgently, then gave Ronan what he asked for. There was nothing he would rather have done.

  
  


~~

 

Ronan was wracked with guilt. 

This was nothing new, though he’d sort of been out of practice for a while, so it hurt more than usual.

It was a complicated stew of multiple kinds of guilt, as well, and that just made it harder to ignore. 

First of all, he was genuinely unsure of what to do with Richard Campbell Gansey III now that he had him, and he felt like a fucking fool and a tease and just an all around shitbiscuit for starting something he wasn’t ready to follow through on. Gansey was a fucking gentleman and didn’t betray one instant of impatience or annoyance, but that was Gansey for you. 

But right now Ronan was one hundred percent content to just make out and cuddle with Gansey on the hood of the Pig and not have to think past that to what they might do in bed later. He just hoped Gansey would forgive him for needing to figure himself out — untangle his heart from his intestines and recover from the dizziness of wanting something so badly he couldn’t breathe and then being given it without hesitation like an oxygen mask in zero cabin pressure. 

And then of course there was the guilt of kissing someone that wasn’t Adam. It didn’t matter that Adam had basically said he was okay with Ronan and Gansey doing stuff to figure themselves out, Ronan still felt shitty about it. He had a hard time believing that Adam wasn’t just stepping aside because he thought it was necessary — for what, he wasn’t sure. Maybe Adam thought if he didn’t allow it, Ronan would leave him for Gansey. The idea stabbed Ronan in the gut and the forehead with equal amounts of pain. If Adam believed that, Ronan was a fucking terrible boyfriend. 

There was the possibility of course that Adam was already sick of long distance — or of Ronan himself —  and was finding other interesting people at college, so what Ronan and Gansey did wouldn’t really affect him.

Ronan had to veer away from _that_ thought quickly or it would have drowned him. 

But that wasn’t all. Ronan was an equal opportunity guiltmonger and so he was already worrying about Blue and Henry’s feelings too — well mostly just Blue’s because Henry was clearly a slut for love of all kinds from whoever would give it and also not a hypocrite, so the odds he would be upset about what Ronan and Gansey were doing were slim. 

Blue on the other hand... Ronan really cared about her feelings in all of this. Gansey was her True Love, after all. That had been clear to Ronan way before the fucked up fatal prophecy was fulfilled. And he wouldn’t jeopardize either his or Gansey’s relationship with her for the world. 

He looked over at Gansey’s beautiful profile and sighed. They’d taken a break from each other’s mouths to lie on the Pig’s hood and look up at the stars. Gansey seemed utterly blissed out and Ronan winced at having to break the silence with his worries, but there was nothing for it. He wouldn’t feel right doing anything else until he knew.

“When you talked to Blue and Henry about us sharing a bed, did you mention.... this?” 

Gansey turned his head to blink at Ronan, his brow furrowed in either confusion or concern. “Kissing, you mean?”

It seemed a bit reductive, but Ronan wasn’t going to quibble. He just shrugged and nodded. 

“Not specifically, but it’s fine.” He smiled fondly at Ronan, who’s stomach jolted in response. 

He scowled to cover up his need and his nerves. “Fine how?”

“The normal kind of fine — ie: both of them are okay with me exploring stuff with other people and trust me to to be communicative around my feelings and my choices. Why do you ask?” There was the barest hint of iciness in Gansey’s reply and follow-up question, but Ronan needed this conversation more than Gansey needed his pretensions of privacy. 

“You sure they’ll be okay with this?”

Gansey propped himself up on one elbow and faced Ronan, who was supine on the hood, hands locked behind his head. “I’m sure, Ro. I can ask Blue to call you after we’ve talked if that will help.” 

“Not if she’s mad at me,” Ronan said, his mouth caught between a smirk and a grimace. 

Gansey smiled and pressed his hand to Ronan’s chest. Ronan couldn’t help resting his own on top of it. “I promise she won’t be.”

Ronan closed his eyes and squeezed Gansey’s hand. “Wish you could promise the same for Adam.”

“Wait. You think he’ll be upset about this? I figured he must have been fine with it or...” As Gansey trailed off Ronan opened his eyes to see worry etched deeply into his face.

Ronan was pretty sure he looked just as concerned. “I don’t know how he’s feeling about it, honestly. But when we talked he said it was okay. I’m trying to take him at his word.” 

Both of them were silent for a moment, but Gansey squeezed Ronan’s hand right back. 

Then Ronan felt Gansey’s lips brush the tip of his shoulder before being pressed lightly to his shirt. His response was mumbled into the fabric. “He loves you. He wants you to be happy.”

“Yeah, but he has absolutely no concept of how happy  _ he _ makes me. Like, it just doesn’t connect for him.” 

“He’s starting to get it,” Gansey soothed, his lips now close to Ronan’s ear. The heat of his breath caused a shiver down Ronan’s spine. “Love for him is...”

“I know. I hate it. It’s like he’s still running on a deficit. If I could just dream up a way of filling up all the places in him that his parents left empty....” Ronan let out a breath in defeat. “I’ve tried.”

“You’re doing a great job as is. He’s so much more whole now. You can see it. I can, at least.” Gansey pulled his hand out from under Ronan’s and brought it to his cheek, cupping it gently, tenderly. Ronan shut his eyes tight to keep them from spilling over.

“I don’t think I’m enough.” 

He felt the soft press of Gansey’s lips on his cheekbone and couldn’t hold onto himself any longer. One wretched sob tore out of him, and then Gansey’s lips landed everywhere on his face, along with quiet words in his ear, and he’d wrapped his arms around Gansey’s shoulders to hold on tight as the storm blew through him, intense but short. 

Gansey’s thumb was already wiping away Ronan’s tears as he gulped enough air to quell the hiccups. “You’re enough for what you can do, love. He’s got his own work, and he’s doing it. And I’m here for both of you. So are Blue and Henry.”

“Yeah?” Ronan blinked up at Gansey, who looked starry through the tears clinging to his lashes. His awe at Gansey’s sweetness temporarily outstripped his shame at breaking down. 

“Yeah. We’ll all pour as much love as we can into him, don’t you worry.” Gansey bent to kiss Ronan’s forehead and it felt like a benediction. “Into you too, dreamer. You deserve it as much as he does.”

Ronan shook his head, though he wasn’t ready to argue the point with Gansey. “I don’t even know why I’m crying.”

Gansey’s smile burned blindingly bright for just a moment, and then he chuckled and kissed Ronan again, even though his face was wet and snotty. “I’m not saying I  _ do _ know, but I get it.” He finally stopped propping himself up on his elbows and just rested his head — and most of his upper body — on Ronan’s chest. The warm, trusting weight of him helped settle Ronan’s emotional upheaval in ways very few things could. He kept his arms loosely wrapped around Gansey’s shoulders and slowly steadied his breath while staring up at the distant blanket of stars.

In the silence, Ronan marveled at who he was now. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what had caused everything to feel like too much inside of him — that was perfectly clear. It was simply the overwhelming love he had for Adam - for _all_ of his friends - and his fervent need for them to be okay. None of that had abated since their quest had ended, and these days the stakes felt just as high, but now life was just so much more ordinary. And full of reciprocal love. And therefore still quite harrowing for Ronan. 

No, the part that meant Ronan barely recognized himself was where he cried instead of trying to break something — usually a bone — in a fit of either violence or daredevilry. He wasn’t sure exactly when self-destruction had stopped being a pastime he indulged in, but it must have been sometime after he’d survived so many opportunities other things had taken to try and destroy him.  _ And  _ his squad. 

He wasn’t having any more of that, ever.

But that meant that he himself couldn’t do things to jeopardize the well-being of the squad, and he might have already fucked that up. 

“So...” He took a deep breath and cleared his throat before continuing. Gansey pulled his head up off Ronan’s chest at the loud noise in his ear and raised one eyebrow. Ronan felt a flush of heat creep up his neck as he said, “How shitty a person am I if I don’t want to go any further until I’ve talked to Adam?”

“What?” Gansey looked mildly outraged. Ronan held his breath. “That’s not shitty at all, Ro. It’s highly considerate towards him.” Then he gave Ronan an assessing squint and added, “Oh. You think  _ I’d _ find that shitty. Christ. What must you think of me?” 

“No, no, Jesus. I just meant—” Ronan had no idea what he meant, or how to explain his worry. “I dunno. You’ve gotten used to a level of... I guess... satisfaction? And your partners have been gone for a  _ while, _ and...” 

“Oh my  _ God, _ Ronan. Blue balls are not actually a thing. And I of all people know how to keep it in my pants for Christ’s sake.” Gansey was grinning by this point. 

Ronan scowled hard so Gansey wouldn’t see his awkwardness. “Look. Fuck off. I just didn’t wanna be a tease.”

“Oh Ronan, you’re perfect. I’m so deeply satisfied with getting to kiss you right now, I don’t need anything else. And I don’t want to go forward until you’re ready.”

“Fucking Christ. Make me sound like some virginal fainting flower...”

A beat, a frown, and then, “Shrinking violet? No, honey. You are definitely not that. Not with the way you use your tongue.” Gansey’s eyebrow was cocked rakishly and Ronan preened inwardly at the compliment. 

Gansey’s grin was wolfish as Ronan’s neck and cheeks flushed hot, but then he backed off — just turned to lay on his back with his head on Ronan’s shoulder and looked at the stars.

They stayed like that until Gansey started to shiver even with Ronan pressed up against his side. Then they drove through the dark mountain roads in contented silence for a while, until Gansey complained about how uncomfortable it was to try to rest his head on Ronan’s hard shoulder, especially when he was shifting gears. 

Ronan took the highway home so he could accelerate until he reached the speed of his heart. Once there, everything in him slowed down and stilled — emotional hydroplaning but with full and complete control. He could breathe. He could see the future. He understood wholeness. He could imagine talking to Adam without losing him forever. 

The feeling lasted only the length of the trip home, but it helped him retire to his own bed after kissing Gansey goodnight, even if the feel of Gansey’s lips stayed on his long after he’d stripped down to his shorts and settled in bed to sleep.


	5. Bond Order

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ro, honey, the phone’s for you. Come on. She won’t give up.”
> 
> “Fucking no. Why. Blue, you bastard.” The last bit he called into the phone before hiding his face again.
> 
> “Ronan, come on, man. Let me at least congratulate you.” Blue was laughing as she spoke and it was clear even on speaker that she was truly delighted by the course of events.
> 
> Ronan lifted his head and frowned at Gansey. He whispered, “You told her already?”
> 
> Gansey nodded and shrugged. Ronan scowled as he grabbed the phone and took it off speaker before rolling back over and putting it to his ear. Gansey didn’t try to listen in, but he couldn’t keep his hands off of Ronan’s inked skin. As long as he didn’t tickle, he figured it would be okay to trace the gorgeous black patterns across Ronan's back and shoulders while he was being inducted into the Dating Gansey Club. Or possibly support group.

Gansey was awake — slow, slow, quickquick — and Ronan was still beside him in bed. 

He breathed a sigh of relief and let his heartbeat level out to a normal rate as he tried to remember what time it was when Ronan crawled in with him.

They’d gotten home near midnight, but Gansey hadn’t been able to sleep for hours, possibly because neither Blue nor Henry were awake to say goodnight to when he’d finally gotten a chance to text them. 

His brain was a fickle thing.

Especially because sometime in the wee hours of the morning, shortly after Ronan settled against Gansey’s back, he started to feel his eyelids droop and his brain seemed to let up on its incessant whirring. All Gansey could think about was Ronan’s arm around his chest and the comfort he drew from it. 

But now Ronan had his back to Gansey, who couldn’t help pressing his forehead to the ink-darkened spot right between Ronan’s shoulder blades. It felt so damned right to touch him like this, to wake up next to him in the morning. How had they taken so long to get here?

Oh right, because compulsory heterosexuality. 

It had taken actually dating Henry for Gansey to be able to parse his feelings for Ronan, oddly enough. Everything he’d felt with regard to Henry had seemed like deja vu, and finally he’d come to terms with why that was. 

Gansey wanted to make it up to Ronan — his cluelessness — but he didn’t know how, and Ronan clearly needed some time to work through how to be with both him and Adam. 

Which Gansey was all for taking. 

There was no point regretting lost time anyway because he honestly couldn’t imagine the whole situation working as well as it did now if Ronan had started dating Gansey first. In fact, if the two of them had done anything before Ronan and Adam were as settled as they were now, that relationship might never have happened, and Gansey would have felt like a complete failure. Adam deserved every bit of the love Ronan had for him, and Gansey wouldn’t get in the way of that for the life of him. 

He needed to talk to Blue about this. Henry, too, since he understood poly stuff the most of any of them. 

He lightly kissed Ronan’s shoulder and crept out of bed and up to the roof, phone in hand, glasses on his face, and wearing only his boxers, his boat shoes, and one of Ronan’s ragged hoodies with the sleeves cut off.

The phone rang nearly to voicemail before it picked up.

“Mmf. Why.”

“Hey, sweetpea. I’m sorry. I thought it was a traveling day and you’d be up.”

“Sleeping on the bus because Henry snores.” There was a distant protest that they both ignored.

“Should I let you go?” Gansey would have, but he really didn’t want to. 

It’s possible Blue could hear that in his voice — though he’d tried to mask it — because she sounded a lot more awake when she said, “No, honey. What’s up?”

“Um...” He didn’t know how to say it and not sound like a jerk. He’d always been taught not to kiss and tell. “Ronan... drove the Pig last night.”

There was a small pause before Blue asked, “With or without you?”

“With. And his lips are surprisingly soft.”

“OH! Hen! They did it!” 

In the background, Henry’s voice was deeply muffled, but then, clear as a bell, “...on speaker!” 

“No,” Gansey nipped that in the bud. “Not if you’re on a bus, please.” 

Blue, her mouth away from the phone, let Henry know she’d tell him all the details later, then came back to Gansey, saying, “Well?”

“We just kissed. He’s skittish about Adam and you two.” 

“He’s such a Catholic, geez. Don’t worry, I’ll talk to him. And Adam.”

“No, let him start the conversation with Adam. If, after talking to Ronan, he comes to you, that’s a different story.”

Blue hummed in a way that made Gansey certain Adam would talk to her about all of this. They seemed to have gotten closer while Gansey’s attention was elsewhere. It warmed him as he stood in the cold, early morning light to know that his people were each other’s people too. 

“Anyway, it was really good. With Ronan. He’s so much softer now, Jane, I don’t know how to explain it.”

She giggled as she said, “Of course. He’s in love. With his two best friends.”

“Two of five.” Gansey still never played favorites when talking about his cabinet, and he assumed no one else did, either.

“Right,” Blue’s voice still held a good amount of mirth, but no mockery. “So...?”

Gansey’s face flushed hot. “I have no idea where this is headed. We might just stay at kissing. Depends on how he’s feeling about Adam’s feelings, it seems.”

“But...?” 

Her nosiness was so gentle and endearing. Not fishing for details, but knowing he needed to talk things out and helping him do that. “But he feels so damned  _ right. _ Sort of like with you, but of course very different. I just mean, it... helps.”

“Helps... with that thing we were talking about?”

“Yeah. Helps ground me as human. Which is harder to do without you and Hen. So I’m glad I have Ro now.” 

“Henry, baby, we’re out of a job.”

“Don’t, Jane. Don’t joke like that. You know it’s not true. I need all of you.”

“I know, honey pie.” Her voice was soft and fond and held a hint of apology, which was more than enough. “I’m really so happy for you. For both of you. Honestly.”

“Thanks, my love.” Gansey wiped away the wetness in the corner of his eye and told himself it was from the wind, nothing more.

“Hey,” she said, “let me talk to him. Is he awake?”

“Not when I left him.”

“In your bed? Good boy.” There was a clapping bump sound and Gansey imagined Blue and Henry high-fiving. He rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah, but I’m on the roof.”

“Well go down and wake him up. I need to give him some advice on the care and feeding of our Gansey.”

As he descended the fire escape he couldn’t decide if her prolonged exposure to Henry was influencing her for the worse or the better. 

When he stepped into the second floor room, Ronan was still sprawled on the bed. The morning light was creeping toward him but hadn’t yet reached the mattress or his pale, darkly-inked skin. The blanket had worked its way down to his waist since Gansey had left the bed and this was the first time he had been given both a complete view of the tattoo and as much time as he wanted to pore over it. He was tempted to hang up on Blue and just stare at his Greywaren’s back, so fearfully and wonderfully made. 

But he didn’t. Instead, he climbed in behind Ronan and pressed another kiss to his shoulder, then scooted up against his back and brought the phone right up near Ronan’s face. 

“Jane? Go ahead,” he said.

She was on speaker, so Gansey could hear as well as Ronan when Blue said, “Is he there? Ronan? Wake up, asshole.”

Ronan flinched then groaned and pawed at the phone, trying to push it away. Gansey didn’t let him, and Blue was still calling to him, so he attempted to roll over and basically just turned into Gansey’s chest, burrowing his face into his own hoodie and grunting his displeasure. 

It sounded to Gansey like he mumbled, “Why clothes?” as he reached under the hem of the sweatshirt to press his hot hands to Gansey’s stomach. 

Gansey stifled a yelp and put the phone closer to Ronan’s ear, saying, “Ro, honey, the phone’s for you. Come on. She won’t give up.”

“Fucking no. Why. Blue, you bastard.” The last bit he called into the phone before hiding his face again. 

“Ronan, come on, man. Let me at least congratulate you.” Blue was laughing as she spoke and it was clear even on speaker that she was truly delighted by the course of events.

Ronan lifted his head and frowned at Gansey. He whispered, “You told her already?”

Gansey nodded and shrugged. Ronan scowled as he grabbed the phone and took it off speaker before rolling back over and putting it to his ear. Gansey didn’t try to listen in, but he couldn’t keep his hands off of Ronan’s inked skin. As long as he didn’t tickle, he figured it would be okay to trace the gorgeous black patterns across Ronan's back and shoulders while he was being inducted into the Dating Gansey Club. Or possibly support group.

Ronan huffed and grunted for the first thirty seconds of the conversation, but then he started answering Blue with begrudging amusement, that little tell of delight and admiration in his voice. Their mutual appreciation society was getting more epic all the time. 

“Yeah, he’s fucking ridiculous. I mean, magical, but ridiculous. ... You should have seen him. Sometimes I’m not sure he’s even human. ... Yeah,  _ that _ beautiful. ... I  _ know  _ you know. ... Yeah, don’t remind me, Jesus. Those lips... Shut up. I haven’t, I swear. ... No really, I never fucking fantasized about your boyfriend. ... Because he was  _ yours, _ dumbass. ... Yes, yours  _ plural _ Henry, Christ. ... Doesn’t mean I had any right... Yeah. I know. It’s just not my go-to... I know. I know. ... I  _ know, _ lay  _ off. _ ... Don’t you fucking mention anything to Adam. Come on, Blue. Be a bro. And keep Henry in line, too. I need some time. ... No, not too much. But  _ some _ ... Jesus, you two. I  _ know. _ ... Yes. ... I’m going back to sleep now. ... Yes, with Gansey if you don’t keep him up. ... No I won’t kiss him for you. Gonna do that for myself. ... Ha, go fuck yourselves. ... Yeah, you too. And be safe. ... Bye.”

He handed the phone back to a scandalized Gansey with a shark’s grin. “Your girlfriend is a fucking menace. More so than your boyfriend. That one,” He added, his ears turning pink, as he pointed to the phone now at Gansey’s ear. 

He didn’t have time to unpack the meaning behind whatever that was before Blue was squealing in his ear. “Ohmygod, I’m so happy for you two!”

A little overwhelmed by what he’d gleaned from this half the conversation, Gansey could only say, “Thanks, sweetheart.”

“Oh, and be really super good to him while he deals with the Adam side of things, okay? He’s steeling himself for everything to fall apart. Adam’s better than that, though. I know it.”

She sounded so sure that Gansey would never have thought to disagree. “I will. I promise.” 

“Good. And tell him to be good to you until we get home.” 

“He will. I won’t even have to ask.” Gansey smiled down at Ronan and dragged his fingertip over the black feather that ran along the top of his shoulder then dipped down to his collarbone near his neck. Ronan shifted underneath his touch in an inviting way. 

In the distance, but getting closer to the phone as he continued, Henry’s voice seemed to say, “Let him go now so they can get to it.” 

Gansey felt his neck heat up, and he tried to offset it by winking at Ronan. “Tell that boy to get his mind out of the gutter, Jane. Ro and I are simply helping each other sleep.” Ronan’s eyes shone in amusement, and his hands once again sought out Gansey’s skin under the hoodie.

“Lies,” Henry said, much closer to the phone now. Blue repeated Henry’s sentiment, with emphasis.

“Well, I  _ never _ ,” Gansey huffed in mock indignation. “I believe I have to let you two go now. Get some good rest and travel safe, you hear?”

Henry protested with a moan but Blue giggled at Gansey’s faux Southern Charm and said she was sending him kisses and hugs and more before they said their goodbyes and finally hung up. 

The moment the phone was no longer against Gansey’s ear, Ronan had the hoodie over his head and off, and was pressing his sleep-warm body up against Gansey’s bare skin. It felt glorious. 

  
  


~~

  
  


“Hey, honey.”

“Hey, babe. You busy?”

“Nope. Just got out of class.” Adam’s voice was warm and he sounded active and alert and ready to listen. 

Ronan settled back into the couch in his den and watched Opal sniff at the snacks he’d brought her. He took a deep breath and said, “I was wondering if you’d be interested in coming home this weekend.”

“Oh... Um. Possibly?” Adam was already answering not the question of interest, but the question of ability, which Ronan appreciated but couldn’t quite trust. “I gotta check my schedule and my workload, but it’s definitely possible.” 

“Didn’t ask if it was possible, Parrish. I asked if you wanted to.”

There was a mere breath of a silence before Adam answered, but it stabbed Ronan in the chest. “I always want to, Ro. I miss you. And Gansey. I’m just not sure if I can, yet.”

“Okay.” Ronan clenched a fist instead of his teeth so that Adam couldn’t hear how difficult this was for him. “When do you think you’ll know?”

“My work schedule comes out tomorrow, so... I’ll let you know in the evening?” 

“Yeah, okay.” 

Opal had given up chewing on a resealable trail mix bag — one that Ronan had already opened for her so she wouldn’t tear it to shreds getting into it — and had climbed up to crouch next to Ronan. When he rested his hand on her dingy hat, she tipped to the side and sprawled across his lap, happy as a puppy and gnawing loudly on a carrot. 

“Ro? You still there?”

“Yeah?”

“I asked what was up this weekend.”

“Oh, uh, nothing. I just miss you and it’s still about a month ‘til Thanksgiving and I thought maybe you’d wanna get away for a bit...” He was rambling. He shut his mouth quick.

“Nothing? You sure?”

Ronan’s face flushed hot. Opal reached up to poke his cheek and he batted her hand away. “No plans, if that’s what you mean. I just wanna...” 

He didn’t know how to say he needed Adam’s body against his to remind him of the difference between it and Gansey’s. That he wanted the feeling of being home that Adam’s arms gave him, which was so much different than Gansey’s. That he wanted to dream with his boyfriend, not sleep next to his... he didn’t know what. That basically, he needed a refresher course on how to be with Adam again now that he’d had something different. 

That he was afraid, if left to his own devices, he’d try to get everything he needed from Gansey and would soon not be able to remember all the reasons he was with Adam. 

“I just want you,” He ended, feebly. 

“I’m not driving all the way home for a booty call. You come over here for that, if you need it so bad.” Adam was laughing as he spoke but his response dug the knife deeper into Ronan’s chest.

“Don’t, man. I’m trying to, you know, communicate my needs. Don’t be flippant.” 

“And your needs are what, exactly, Ronan?” There was a hint of challenge in Adam’s voice that, if Ronan was aiming for foreplay, would have been most welcome. But now it just made him sad.

“You. I just... I miss how it feels being with you, Magician. I need it to be  _ us _ for a bit.”

“Oh.” A thoughtful silence, and then a shift in tone, softer now. “Is the itch back? I thought Gansey...”

“Gansey is great, and his touch helps, but...” Opal pressed her grubby hand to Ronan’s chest and he remembered to breathe through the tightness. “I love him. I love kissing him. But he’s not you.”

A longer silence, one in which Ronan practiced breathing and Opal scrambled up to sit in his lap and lean her head against his chest.

“Kissing. Right. Okay. Anything more?” 

Ronan shook his head. “No. I couldn’t. Not until I’d talked to you. Seen you. I thought about driving down tonight without asking but I didn’t think you’d want me there...” 

“I work Monday evenings. But if you need me that badly—”

“No. I got this. It’s fine. He’s fine. I’m fine.” He paused and the silence on the other end seemed skeptical. “Really. Nothing’s wrong, I promise.”

“Ro...” Adam sighed, but not in an exasperated way, Ronan didn’t think. More like he’d been holding his breath without realizing it. “What is it you are wanting from him?”

That wasn’t the question Ronan was expecting. He took a breath. “I dunno. To be as close to him as I feel, without holding back. To be able to show him how much I love him. You know, without having to die for him.”

“Been there, done that. We all need to stop dying for and killing each other.”

“Right? God.” Ronan smiled as he spoke but his stomach was still in knots. “I just... You know what he’s like. I just want to be okay loving him and not feel bad about it.”

“Have you...” Adam, ever the thinker, was clearly choosing his words carefully. “Have you felt bad about loving him? About loving me?”

“I used to hate myself for wanting you so badly when you were obviously all twisted up over Blue.”

Adam made a soft noise and then something rubbed up against the phone’s microphone. “Even if they schedule me for Saturday, I’m sure I can switch with Kevin.”

Ronan’s sigh was half relief, half frustration. “I’m not a charity case. I just thought it would be a good time—”

“Not doing it for you, Lynch. I just really need to hug you. Like, all night. Can we schedule that? Do I have to put in a request with Gansey?” 

“Bastard,” Ronan said with infinite affection. 

Opal squawked approval and hopped all over the couch, arms up in victory. “Adam! Adam!” 

“What’s that? Is that Opal?”

“Yeah,” Ronan said, with a fond smile as he tried to catch her around the waist with only one arm. “Guess she’s excited to see you, too.”

“Give her a hug from me. I can’t wait to see you both.” 

“Me too. Us too,” Ronan added over Opal chanting  _ me-too-me-too-me-too _ while climbing onto Ronan’s shoulders. “Christ, kid. You’re all sharp edges. Don’t scratch.”

Adam giggled and said a little louder than normal, “Honey, be gentle with him. He’s sensitive now.”

“Yeah, yeah, make fun of the guy who ‘suddenly’ has feelings after loving his friends so hard he was willing to nearly die—”

“—for us like fifty times, I know, I know. You’re the sweetest asshole I know, honey. And I can’t wait to spoon you.”

“Yeah. That. That'd be good.”

“I’ll put it on the agenda,” Adam teased, fondly. “I should grab lunch before my next class.”

“I should take this beast outside and exercise her a bit.”

“All right. Talk later?”

“Sure, yeah. Love you.”

“Love you too, Greywaren. G’bye.”

“Bye,” Ronan said, and pressed the hangup button as Opal echoed  _ bye-bye-bye  _ from the back of the couch. 

He took a deep breath and let out all of it, marveling at the fact that his heart was still firmly in his chest and not sunk into his stomach or puddled on the floor. Everything seemed to be okay. Nothing blew up. The weekend would be really good for them — all of them, hopefully — but his body was already starting to vibrate in anticipation and nervousness.

“C’mon, champ. Let’s go say hi to our forest friends.” Ronan stood and Opal tumbled onto the couch cushions without the support of his shoulders. She laughed and gabbled nonsense English and pranced through the house to the door, but waited for Ronan — and Chainsaw, who fluttered from the mantel to his shoulder right on cue — to head outside.

They spent the rest of the afternoon romping around the grounds of the Barns, playing hide and seek with both dream and real animals, and tossing around the toys he’d dreamt up for her. 

Every once in a while, if you pretended you didn’t have a care in the world, and you distracted yourself sufficiently, you could almost believe it was true. 


	6. Potential Energy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hunger.” Ronan hated how well the term fit the emptiness inside him that Gansey had always been able to fill.
> 
> Adam glanced over and smiled just a little bit when Ronan opened his eyes and stared at him. “Yeah. Blue’s word, but it’s the right one.”
> 
> “Blue’s...? You talk to her about Gansey and me?” Ronan almost closed his eyes again, but he was too shocked. “Henry too?”
> 
> “Henry some. Mostly Blue. She mentioned it first, honestly.” The smile widened. “She understands Gansey better than Gansey does.”
> 
> Ronan snorted, but then the other shoe dropped. “And you know me better than I do.”
> 
> Adam glanced over at Ronan again, eyes gleaming in that peculiarly Persephone sort of way — not quite vacant but fathoms deep. “Only the things you lie to yourself about.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little wonky because the second section happens before the first one ends, and then the third one picks up shortly after the first one left off. 
> 
> Hopefully, when reading it, the jumping back and forth in time thing is less confusing than the above sentence. :/
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

It was time for Gansey to leave.

He was curled up in Aurora’s chair in the den, watching Ronan and Adam cuddle and giggle on the couch, and it was clear to him, if not them, that he had undeniably become the third wheel in this situation. The realization was surprisingly painful. 

They’d had a lovely evening at the Barns, and Gansey felt deep gratitude at being invited to dinner with them. It was like old times, catching up and joking and telling stories with his boys — two of his boys. His right and left bowers, if he was going with the whole king metaphor. Which made a little too much sense, especially taking into account Blue and Henry, and before that, Noah... (He wasn’t going to think about losing Noah, he was already too sad to get himself that depressed.)

He was deeply at home with his Magician and his Greywaren, and everything had felt really good, if slightly stilted, since Ronan had kept more physical distance between the two of them than they’d had all week and was nearly attached to Adam, almost to the point of exasperation on Adam’s part. Fond exasperation, though. It was hard to be annoyed with Ronan when he wanted to drape himself over your shoulders or touch your hair and waist and back, and when he made weak and transparent excuses to take hold of your hand. 

Gansey now knew all of this first hand, and watching it happen with Adam was bittersweet but truly endearing. Ronan tried so hard to be nonchalant and both Adam and Gansey could see right through him, which meant the two of them shared more than a few private smiles over Ronan’s behavior. Gansey felt both in on the joke and accepted for the part he played in it. 

At one point during the ‘cooking’ portion of the evening, Adam had asked, “Has he been like this all week?”

Not wanting to embarrass Ronan — and not wanting to get into the physicality of his and Ronan’s relationship as it had played out so far since that wasn’t really his information to divulge — Gansey shrugged and simply said, “Approximately.” 

Adam smiled, though his eyes looked a bit too thoughtful for it to seem genuine. 

Ronan snorted his derision and seemed put out for the next few minutes, though he righted himself once they’d started to eat. 

Everything had been grand, really, until late in the evening, and it wouldn’t have been that big a deal to just go, ‘right, I’m off, you two have a good night’ and get himself out the door and home if Gansey hadn’t been blessed with the distinct pleasure of Ronan in his bed for the last three nights. He took a deep breath and resigned himself to getting a lot of work done on the Henrietta model as he stood up and attempted to say the right words for the occasion. 

“I’ll leave you two alone now and head back to my bed. Ronan, let him get  _ some _ sleep, won’t you?” It should have come off more jauntily than it did, and he tried to hide his wince with a stretch and a yawn. 

Adam didn’t quite seem fooled. “You all right, Gansey? You’ll get home safe?”   


“Of course. Don’t mind me.” He waved Ronan off before he could get up and... what? Hug him? Show him out? Kiss him goodnight at the door? (wishful thinking, he knew.) “I’ll show myself out.” 

Both Ronan and Adam called goodnight after him as he walked to the back door, but he couldn’t swallow around whatever was in his throat to reply. 

It was stupid. He was being stupid. He knew that. 

It didn’t matter.

Ronan hadn’t chosen Adam over him. He just hadn’t seen his boyfriend in weeks and, by his own admission, had really missed him. Gansey couldn’t — and wouldn’t — begrudge him the comfort of Adam’s arms. Not ever. Nor would he want Adam’s welcome home to feel anything less than enthusiastic. 

Nevertheless, Gansey had the right to feel a bit sorry for himself at the moment. When he got in the car he texted Blue and Henry, just to feel a little less alone. They probably couldn’t answer — they might not have even had service — but at least he knew the missive was out there. He shrugged off the voice that derided the text as a cry for attention and drove home a little faster than necessary. Okay, maybe a lot faster.

Monmouth Manufacturing was so quiet that he nearly called Malory to chat, even though it had been months since their interests had aligned after the whole dead Glendower fiasco. 

He flopped on his bed and curled into a ball, hoping the feeling of his chest caving in was simply in his mind, and wished desperately for Noah to come keep him company. 

He knew it was futile, that Noah had said his goodbyes and left them forever, but if there was one thing he’d been made aware of when he was reborn by a magical forest, it was that time was much more circular than humans believed. Granted, for Gansey, things that had happened already only ever seemed to be on the cusp of happening again, never actually doing so. but he had to admit that even just the potential of finding Noah all over again, of running into his ghost outside the gelato place one sunny afternoon and becoming friends without even realizing how fast it happened, truly reassured him in times of doubt. 

It didn’t get him to sleep, but replaying his best-of memories of Noah from beginning to end while he constructed a new house out of a box of crackers and a cardboard mailer was the next best thing. When he finally crawled into bed, his eyes refusing to stay open another moment, he’d decided that Noah had been the longest relationship of his life so far, because it had started the first time he died and lasted until the second time. The symmetry of that was oddly comforting.

When he woke in the morning, with the full force of the sun on his face, he had multiple texts waiting for him: the group text with Henry and Blue had three, the group text with Adam and Ronan had two, and he had one text just from Ronan. He opened the last one first.

It said: I’m sorry. <3

Gansey wasn’t sure exactly what Ronan felt he was apologizing for, but he knew how much he needed to hear it. He held the phone to his heart and curled up around it, letting all the hurt from last night drain out of him. Once he could breathe deeply without that ache in his chest, he responded with a heart before looking at the rest of his texts.

 

~~   
  


Less than five minutes after Gansey had left them, Ronan was shirtless and pressing Adam’s fingertips to his lips. 

Everything about being with Adam felt new and strange but also achingly familiar, and he couldn’t get enough of it. There was a moment when Adam brushed his fingers over the wingtip on Ronan’s shoulder and the echo of Gansey’s hand caused a pang of both guilt and longing, but mostly it was deeply gratifying to fall back into the rhythms he and Adam had developed over months together. 

Except when Adam pulled his hand away and rested his head on the back of the couch instead of Ronan’s shoulder, because Ronan caught a glimpse of his face, and he saw the furrowed brow and vacant stare that meant Adam was deep in thought. It looked more like a brown study than dissociation, so Ronan waited patiently, fingers entwined with Adam’s, until he was ready to share whatever was on his mind. 

This was against 90% of Ronan’s instincts, but he’d learned by now it was the best way to proceed if he didn’t want Adam to shut down. 

“You didn’t touch Gansey once this whole evening.”

Ronan blinked. His face heated up, but the rest of him went cold. “I... didn’t?” 

He knew damned well he hadn’t, even though he’d wanted to, often. But it didn’t seem right to show affection to Gansey when Adam was there. Especially since he’d specifically asked Adam to come home to spend time with him. 

Adam shook his head. “Nope.” He turned to look at Ronan and added, “It was weird.”

More blinking, this time to keep from becoming dizzy. “ _ Not _ touching him was weird? Fuck. I thought that was better than...”

“Sweetheart, it was so clear that you wanted to, and every time you didn’t I could see Gansey’s face fall. He was missing whatever your new normal is, and you must have been too, because you ended up touching me nonstop.”

“Oh.” Ronan’s whole skin itched. If only he could slough it off. If only he could slough off his whole body, or better yet, his whole persona. He wasn’t very well-suited to this whole living life thing. 

Adam leaned heavily against him, which helped more than he’d ever understand, and squeezed the hand he held. He spoke softer, as if what he said was an afterthought. “It was such a stark difference because you two normally touch each other a  _ lot. _ ” 

“A  _ what? _ ” Ronan’s head reeled for the second time this conversation. “Normally since when?”

Adam’s brow furrowed even deeper. Sometimes when he was thinking hard or was confused he looked angry, his eyebrows went so far down. Ronan hoped to God this was one of those times and he wasn’t actually upset. “Since forever??”

“Jesus.” Ronan was already leaning back against the arm of the couch, but he had to scoot down and throw his legs over Adam’s thighs because he needed to be fully horizontal to process this.

His face was on fire, and when Adam reached his free hand over to touch Ronan’s cheek with his cool fingers, Ronan wanted to press his face to Adam’s hand and also hide from his touch. He went for closing his eyes tight and letting Adam’s palm on his forehead soothe his embarrassment as much as it could. Which was only just enough to keep him from crawling out of his skin.

“Fuck. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry to me, honey? It’s the way you two are.” Adam picked up their linked hands and brought the back of Ronan’s to his cheek, then to his chest. Ronan could feel through his knuckles the beat of Adam’s heart. When he spoke, the vibration of his voice drowned out the rhythm, but Ronan already had it, and could keep time in his head. “I’d actually been wondering if you’d touch more now that you were... kissing, or whether that would have sated some of your hunger for each other, and you’d touch less.”

“Hunger.” Ronan hated how well the term fit the emptiness inside him that Gansey had always been able to fill.

Adam glanced over and smiled just a little bit when Ronan opened his eyes and stared at him. “Yeah. Blue’s word, but it’s the right one.”

“Blue’s...? You talk to  _ her  _ about Gansey and me?” Ronan almost closed his eyes again, but he was too shocked. “Henry too?”

“Henry some. Mostly Blue. She mentioned it first, honestly.” The smile widened. “She understands Gansey better than Gansey does.”

Ronan snorted, but then the other shoe dropped. “And you know me better than I do.” 

Adam glanced over at Ronan again, eyes gleaming in that peculiarly Persephone sort of way — not quite vacant but fathoms deep. “Only the things you lie to yourself about.”

_ Well fuck.  _

“You’re the one who wanted to start dreaming together, Greywaren.” Adam tugged Ronan’s hand to his smirking lips. He pressed Ronan’s knuckles to them, and Ronan swore he could feel Adam’s heartbeat there, too. 

“I...” Ronan cleared his throat. “I don’t dream about Gansey.”

“Not the boy, no. But the king...” 

Flashes of crowns and ringed fingers and richly draped cloth, thrones and stone and obeisance — and need — tumbled through Ronan’s inner sight, crowding out any scrap of justification he could have mustered. 

“You’ve been expecting this.” He could see it in Adam’s face, in every line of his body, in the logical way this conversation had unfolded, and it cut all the way through him. “I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to...”

“I know, sweetheart. It’s okay, really. I’ve had months to be okay with this. I knew when I first kissed you how much of your heart was his.”

Ronan wanted to protest, to tell him how much he needed him, but Adam held a finger near his lips. “And I know your desire for me firsthand. I know your devotion and your strength and your loyalty. I don’t doubt any of them. Really, I don’t. You’re magnificent in your love for me. I’ve never been left wanting more from you.”

Adam tipped over sideways so he was leaning on Ronan’s chest, still holding his hand tightly, looking as comfortable in this conversation as if he’d had it before — or rehearsed it.

“I also know your love for Gansey — and his for you. I’ve witnessed it from the start, and it was so strong I didn’t think there would ever be room for me. And then Gansey, bless his infinite heart, just  _ made _ room, like he’d plucked it out of a dream. And you, loyal to a fault, followed suit. You have no idea how grateful I was for your grudging respect and acceptance. I’m sorry it took me so long to see it for what it was: you were also making room for me in your heart. So much more room than I ever expected, or thought I deserved. Anyway...”

He smiled as his finger drifted along Ronan’s jawline toward his lips, so Ronan licked them in invitation. Adam pressed a finger to them, a gesture that asked for patience, and Ronan gave him a tiny nod. 

“I dunno what I’m saying, except this feels right to me. It feels more honest than any other way of trying to be together, for the two of us, for you and him, and for all of us. And I’m pretty sure Blue and Henry agree with me.” Adam smiled like he knew without a doubt. No ‘pretty sure’ anything. 

Ronan’s kneejerk reaction was to roll his eyes, which he indulged in because it made Adam chuckle, and there was nothing he treasured more than Adam’s laugh. Adam’s laugh and Gansey’s esteem. Not just the laugh, but what was underneath it — humor, happiness, joy. 

He wrapped his arms around Adam’s shoulders and pulled him close, until he was right on top of Ronan’s chest, the weight of his body pinning Ronan in place, in time, in reality. In waking life. With his boyfriend the magician. “I love you so hard.” 

Another delicious chuckle, and Adam’s voice resonated through both of their chests. “As in solid or difficult?”

“Yes.”

They lay like that for a long time, until Ronan’s emotions had evened out and all that was left in him was the joy of being so close with Adam. His heart delighted in it, and so did his body. In fact, his body was starting to let its delight be known in ways that Adam started to notice, so they kissed and touched and exulted in each other’s bodies for a long time before Adam decided it was time for bed. 

Ronan’s dreams were filled with a king and his courtiers, but when he woke next to Adam in the morning, the two of them couldn’t figure out which of them had been the dreamer and which had observed the dream.    
  
  


~~

 

Lying on his bed, fully dressed, Gansey had been trying hard to distract himself for upwards of an hour. It had only started working the last five-ish minutes because Henry had started texting pictures of himself and Blue hiking in the mountains. The landscape was gorgeous of course, but Gansey was stuck on his partners’ faces, beloved and very much missed. 

Like,  _ very much. _

He was so very in love with both of them, and their summer cross-country roadtrip had cemented them as a trio in ways he was still coming to understand, but it had also accustomed them to near-constant contact. And then Gansey had quit them cold turkey while they kept traveling together, and it was... hard. He’d done okay the first two months — well, a bit less than that, but still — and then it had hit him. The longer they were gone the more he came to understand that they were having life-changing experiences together that he wasn’t a part of. And it was worrisome. 

He wasn’t worried that they wouldn’t love him anymore, but that they would have changed in fundamental ways he hadn’t been around to witness. He knew change was good, and he also knew that he didn’t need to be a part of everything that his partners did, that different experiences were important to bring to the relationship, that it didn’t mean he was being left out, but... after last night he was feeling a  _ little _ sensitive about that. 

Which was unfair of him, because he’d just started a new relationship while Blue and Henry were away, and they had been ecstatic about that fact even though they had yet to witness it. Because they  _ knew _ Gansey and they  _ trusted _ that it was good for him and therefore was good for them, too. 

And Gansey felt that way about their trip, most of the time, when he was his best self. And he knew that Ronan was only ever going to be a solidly good addition to his relationships. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t a little bit nervous about the whole thing, or that Blue and Henry didn’t have the right to be a bit nervous. 

Or that Adam didn’t, for that matter. Adam had every right to not want to see the way that Ronan and Gansey were together now, if he didn’t want to. Which is what Gansey had assumed was going on last night with Ronan not touching him at all. He’d managed to deal with it, and had spent the rest of the night getting used to the idea. And then he’d woken up this morning to a text in which Adam had sworn to both him and Ronan that this was exactly what he wanted today — to see them together and understand. 

Gansey had no earthly idea what that might entail, and was trying his damnedest to distract himself from the anxiety creeping over him, and Henry and Blue had finally delivered. 

He'd become so entranced by their pictures, in fact, that he'd completely missed the sound of the Beemer pulling up outside, and he startled violently when the inside door was shoved open with a screech. 

He tilted his head back, stretching his neck until his mouth opened. An upside down Ronan and Adam walked in and headed directly over to Gansey's bed, as Chainsaw winged up to a rafter from behind them. Adam was smiling his softest smile, and Ronan's was sharp as a stiletto, a hairpin turn, a stolen kiss. Gansey's heart was all over the place and he was certain his face was, too. 

He didn't have time to adjust, or even turn away before Ronan had flopped down on the bed on one side of him and Adam had sat on the edge on the other side. 

Before getting the text, he hadn’t even remotely expected them to hang out this afternoon. He’d assumed Ronan would have wanted Adam to himself all day and maybe they’d have dinner again later. But here they were, and he had no good cues for understanding how the day might go. Gansey was notoriously bad at both judging and conveying tone over text. 

“Hail, fellows, well met!” Gansey said, with perhaps an excess of enthusiasm, though he was excited to see them both. Excited in ways he wasn’t actually prepared to deal with at the moment, honestly. 

“Hey,” Ronan said, his voice scratchy and low as if he’d just woken up. He might have. Or he might have been up to something else for the past hour...

_ Not helping... _

Gansey sat up in order to not feel so exposed and held his fist out for Adam to bump. “What’s up?”

Ronan curled on his side sort of around Gansey’s hips so his face was visible to both Gansey and Adam and said, “Not much.”

One corner of Adam’s mouth quirked up as he looked down at Ronan. “We were thinking movie.”

Gansey reached for his phone on the mattress where he’d dropped it when his boys came in —  _ the _ boys, they weren’t both his, not quite — and said, “No idea what’s playing, honestly, but sure...”

“No, here.” Ronan patted the bed right near his face. “I brought my laptop.”

Squinting slightly at Ronan as he spoke, Gansey said, “Any particular movie you have in mind?”

When the boys looked at each other and shrugged, Gansey realized that neither of them actually had an agenda for this hangout session. That it really was just to  _ be _ together as they normally would be, just now with Ronan and Gansey dating. Or whatever they were. 

Gansey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He could deal with this. Especially if it meant the creature comfort of piling on his bed with his... (now he had the euchre metaphor in his head he couldn’t shake it) his bowers. 

He shifted so his lower back was leaning against Ronan’s torso and raised an eyebrow at Adam, who just smiled inscrutably back. Ronan for his part curled himself tighter around Gansey’s hips as if he had no plans to move for the rest of the day. 

“I’ve been meaning to watch this BBC miniseries on the succession of kings...”

Even Adam rolled his eyes at that. 

“What about Vikings? There’s at least a season’s worth of episodes where they are raiding and pillaging England before it was England...” Ronan looked expectantly up at Gansey and it was too tempting. Gansey brushed a hand down his cheek and cupped his jaw.

“Whatever you want, Greywaren.”

Ronan’s face flushed under Gansey’s touch, and Gansey pulled his hand away and looked up at Adam sheepishly. 

Adam’s smile didn’t slip a millimeter, and there seemed to be some color high on his cheeks as well. Other than that, his only response to Gansey and Ronan was to say, “So... I take it this will be a binge-watching scenario? Should we order in...?”

“In a bit,” Ronan said as he scooted to lean over the bed and bring his laptop case aboard. “Lemme find a good place to start.”

“Can it be after the threesome part?” Adam shocked Gansey by asking in all seriousness.

“The first one? Duh. That’s way too early on. And both times it's just an offer of a threesome. The priest doesn’t go for it.”

“Seemed a wasted opportunity,” Adam said with a sigh that had not a hint of sarcasm in it.  

Gansey hoped he managed to look much less nonplussed than he felt, though thankfully the initial shock wore off while Adam and Ronan were still deciding together where to start the show. They then gave Gansey enough backstory to watch intelligently and not have to ask questions every other minute.

When they settled down to watch, Ronan got himself in the middle, ostensibly because it was his laptop, so it would be on his lap, but it was clear he wanted to be sandwiched between his two people, and Gansey — and by the looks of it, Adam, too — had no qualms with that whatsoever. 

So far, so good. He shot Adam a grateful smile just as Ronan was settling in and starting the show, and for a split second Gansey believed Adam winked back at him.

But then the haunting intro music started up and the visual of a shield underwater caught Gansey’s attention, and Ronan’s side was warm and invited cuddling, and that was that. 


	7. Transition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So how should this work, exactly? You’ve already got a boyfriend, but you can’t really say, ‘I’m going out to dinner with my Greywaren’ in polite society.”
> 
> “I try not to use specific terms for any one of you in ‘polite society’, because there’s always a journalist nearby and the last thing my mother needs is for her picture-perfect son to be labeled by the press as queer and polyamorous so close to the election. Virginia may be getting a lot more progressive recently, but the right-wing media would have a field day with that.” His brow was stormy and apologetic in turns, and Ronan nudged his knee against Gansey’s to show no hard feelings. 
> 
> “Fuck every one of them. I meant like real people.”

They watched two episodes before ordering Chinese, then watched another while they waited for it to arrive. By the time the delivery driver called Gansey’s phone, Ronan was nearly buried underneath limbs from both sides, with a head resting on each shoulder. The ringtone seemed to startle Gansey, and Ronan nudged him with a grin. “You nodding off, Dick?”

“Never. It’s fascinating,” he said as he fumbled with the phone and finally answered it. 

As Gansey extricated himself from the puppy pile and headed to the outside door, Adam kissed Ronan’s cheek then climbing out of bed to head to the bathroom. Left alone, Ronan sprawled out on the bed, stretching his spine and moving the parts of him that had fallen asleep under the weight of his... his boys, and incidentally tried not to wonder for the ninetieth time that week whether he and Gansey should call themselves something, or if it was too soon. Friends had never been right. Brothers had been a lot closer, but had never sufficiently expressed Ronan’s need. Saying ‘my king’ worked at the right moments while making out, but it wasn’t something to use in reference to Gansey in everyday life. And both he and Gansey each already had a boyfriend, so...

Gansey returned before Adam, and Ronan made room on the bed for him and the food. As they were unpacking the bag and divvying up the cartons, Ronan risked jumping the gun and just went for it. “So how should this work, exactly? You’ve already got a boyfriend, but you can’t really say, ‘I’m going out to dinner with my Greywaren’ in polite society.”

“I try not to use specific terms for any one of you in ‘polite society’, because there’s always a journalist nearby and the last thing my mother needs is for her picture-perfect son to be labeled by the press as queer _ and _ polyamorous so close to the election. Virginia may be getting a lot more progressive recently, but the right-wing media would have a field day with that.” His brow was stormy and apologetic in turns, and Ronan nudged his knee against Gansey’s to show no hard feelings. 

“Fuck every one of  _ them _ . I meant like  _ real _ people.”

Gansey shrugged. “I don’t have any real people in my life except the cabinet. The squad, the gang, whatever,” he added as Ronan smirked at Henry’s language infiltrating Gansey’s lexicon.

“What about Malory?”

“He can’t keep any of your names straight anyway, why would I confuse him with your titles?”

“We have titles now, do we?” Ronan crowed. Teasing Gansey was way too easy, and he hadn’t allowed himself to do it for a while. 

“I dunno. You know what I mean: girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, significant other, date, lover, sweetheart, friend, enemy... annoying asshole who doesn’t know how to quit while he’s ahead...” With every new term, Ronan had expressed even more scathing delight at Gansey’s word choice until he was howling with glee and Gansey was smacking him with a pillow. 

“Whoa, watch the food, assholes!” Adam’s voice carried over the chaos and they both calmed down at once, though neither of them could stifle their giggles at Adam’s mock-scornful look. “Do I need to separate you two?”

Ronan shook his head hard and then toppled over onto his side and rested his head on Gansey’s knee. Gansey propped the pillow up behind himself and placed a hand on Ronan’s shoulder, almost sounding serious as he said, “We were trying to come up with a title — a descriptor,” he amended as Ronan snickered. “A term for each other. A way of referring to whatever this is.” 

He waved his hand between his chest and Ronan’s shoulder, and in a moment all the mirth dropped out of Ronan and he looked up at Adam with baited breath.

“Oh, yeah. Boyfriend doesn’t differentiate and using terms for royalty would sound silly everywhere but here. Huh.”

Adam was spacing out on his sweet and sour pork as he turned the problem over in his mind, so when Gansey raised his eyebrow at Ronan, he just shook his head. 

Gansey looked down at his food, then took an uncharacteristically deep breath before saying, “I’m a complete nerd and can’t help thinking of everyone in terms of trump cards in euchre.”

Ronan squinted up at him with his ‘are you an alien life form’ look and Adam frowned until his face cleared in understanding. “Like... oh.” He smiled, amused. Ronan had to tear his eyes away when Gansey started to explain.

“It’s a card game with one suit being called the trump suit, which is the highest suit in the game. The king, queen, ace, and jack of one suit, and the other jack of the same color, are the highest cards in the trump suit, and you choose a different suit to be trump before each hand.”

Ronan had to interrupt with, "Wait, Trump is a good thing now?" 

"I know," Gansey huffed, his hand back on Ronan's shoulder, the warm weight comforting. "Unfortunate connotations these days. This word comes from the verb, not the last name."

Ronan nodded but kept quiet, and Adam contributed,  “So, yeah, if the suit of hearts is trump, every heart is higher than any card of any other suit.” When Gansey nodded at Adam he continued, directing the explanation at Ronan. “And the highest card in the trump suit — let’s stick with hearts as trump — is the jack of hearts. Then comes the jack of diamonds, then the ace of hearts, then the king and the queen and so on down to the deuce.”

“Okay, but then...” Ronan smirked hard at Gansey. “The king isn’t the most powerful card in the suit.”

“I know,” Gansey replied, looking down at Ronan in his lap with a helpless grin. “The right bower is.”

Ronan looked to Adam for clarification. 

“The jack of hearts, in this case. And the left bower is the jack of diamonds.” 

“So who’s—”

“I couldn’t decide, to be perfectly honest.” Gansey looked from Ronan to Adam and back with that silly grin, and Ronan’s heart clenched.

“And the others?”

“Well, Blue’s the queen, I guess? So since Noah was the ace, now Henry is—”    


“Whoa. No. Noah gets to stay whatever he was before,” Ronan interrupted, not having their Ghost Boy usurped just because he was now  _ more _ dead. “And you said the ace is the highest after the bowers?” Ronan got two nods of confirmation. He sat fully up and reached for his food. “Then  _ that’s _ Blue. And you’re king, and Henry’s the queen, obviously.”

Gansey’s face shone with sheer delight. “Wow, yes. Absolutely. Well played.”

“And Ronan’s the right—”

“Left bower,” Ronan interrupted Adam with a frown.  

“Highest card gets played first, a lot of the time, to draw out trump from everyone else’s hands,” Adam said with a note of triumph in his voice.

Gansey’s tone mirrored Adam’s when he added, “Willing sacrifice,” and pointed to Ronan.

“Adam’s bargain with Cabeswater was the willing sacrifice, guys. Not sayin’, just sayin’.” Ronan held his hands up as if in surrender, then stabbed his chopsticks into his kung pao chicken, since the debate was over.

“What happened to the guy who was willing to die for his friends like fifty times?” Adam muttered good-humoredly as he dug into his pork with a fork. 

Ronan shrugged. “He’s over that, now. It’s much more satisfying to sleep with them than to risk his life for them.” 

Adam’s grin was peeking out at the corners of his mouth as he raised his eyebrows at Gansey, who looked impossibly flustered. 

“ _ Just _ sleep,” Gansey murmured into his sesame beef. “I didn’t seduce your boyfriend.”

“No, he finally broke down and asked for what he’s always wanted.” 

Both Ronan and Gansey just stared at Adam, who was chewing his pork with the most benign look on his face. 

“You don’t  _ know. _ You weren’t there.” Ronan knew he had no right to be so defensive about this, but dammit. No one ever told him that being in a deeply loving relationship would entail having your beloved dredge up your innermost fears and insecurities and desires and lay them out on the table for dissection like they were specimens to be studied. 

Or maybe that was just dating a fucking powerful scrying magician who bargained away his body to a magical, demon-possessed forest, and whose heartbeat was synced to a ley line. 

Gansey shrugged, chastened. “He’s not far off the mark, Ro. Though the same could be said for me, for what it’s worth.” He smiled lopsidedly at Adam who grinned back.

“Blue and Henry and I are proud of you for figuring that out, Gansey.”

“Ugh, I  _ know. _ They won’t stop congratulating me,” Gansey said with a sweet little smile as his cheeks and ears flushed pink. 

He picked shyly at his sesame beef with his chopsticks, and he looked so beautiful, blushing with his eyes downcast and that smile still playing around his lips, that Ronan couldn’t help himself. He leaned over and kissed Gansey’s temple — a quick, impetuous peck — and a little noise of surprise escaped Gansey. He reached after Ronan’s retreating face and touched his cheek, then followed the caress up with a soft kiss to Ronan’s lips. 

Ronan froze, torn between delight at Gansey’s effortless affection and guilt at indulging in it in front of Adam. Gansey opened his eyes as he pulled away and glanced over at Adam with a sheepish grin. 

“I’d apologize for falling in love with all of the people you date, Parrish, but you must admit you’ve got incredibly good taste.” 

Adam laughed, freely and with what looked like delight, and Ronan just stared at his beauty. Had there ever been a moment so designed in the history of the universe to make Ronan more transportingly happy? 

His heart was kicking him hard in the chest at Gansey’s words, and warmth blossomed and spread through his stomach and cheeks at Adam’s joy, and he really could have died right there on Gansey’s bed and been the happiest asshole in the whole fucking world. 

He must have looked dazed as fuck because Adam, still chuckling, pulled him into a hug. After he’d kissed Ronan in a suspiciously similar way to Gansey, he whispered, “Thanks for this. It helps to see it.” 

Ronan licked his lips, then cleared his throat and nodded, whispering, “Anything for you, my heart.”

“Half your heart,” Adam corrected, still beaming at him. 

“Maybe, but let’s be real, you’re in damned good company.” Clinging to Adam, Ronan turned to Gansey, who was smiling like the proudest of all parents in that moment. It was weird, but also the most Gansey thing. 

“Honored,” was all he said, and then he reached over and wrapped his arms around them, giving both Ronan and Adam quick, soft kisses on their cheeks. 

After a few moments of contented cuddling, someone’s stomach rumbled and Ronan snorted with amusement. “Guess we should finish eating and get back to our show, huh?”

As he let go of them and sat back to assess if there had been any food spillage from the pile-on hug, Gansey said, “We could dispense with the show-watching excuse and just cuddle. I’d be fine with that.” 

Adam gulped down a chuckle and assented, so Ronan shrugged and put the laptop on the floor nearby. They finished eating and laughed at each other’s fortunes, especially when they added “in bed” to the end of each one. Adam’s was “All your hard work will soon pay off”, Ronan’s was “It is up to you to create your own adventures”, and Gansey’s was “You are able to juggle many tasks”. 

“Henry and Blue must appreciate that,” Ronan said, poking Gansey’s side. 

He yelped and tipped over against Ronan, then stayed leaning on him. “Honestly, Henry’s not into doing too much. He enjoys watching, though.” Ronan shared a look with Adam, and Gansey caught it. “Oh God, don’t tell him I said that, please.”

“What’s the term? Metamours? Ronan’s his metamour now, so it’s not that weird, right?” 

Gansey looked approvingly at Adam and said, “You’ve been reading up, huh? I suppose you’re his metametamour, though, so...”

Ronan gave both of them his best WTAF face, and Adam smiled. “Your partner’s partner is your metamour. You have two, I have one. Though Gansey proposes that I have metametamours — my partner’s partner’s partners.”

Frowning, Ronan said, “Only two of those were possessives, right?”

“Yes. One was a plural.”

“Can’t we all just be parts of a polycule? That’s accurate enough, right?” Ronan whined. He shifted to get more comfortable holding Gansey’s weight, who ended up sliding down until he was sprawled half across Ronan’s lap.

“Now that Gansey has connected his triad to our diad to make one five person shape, yes.” Adam smiled down at Gansey. It was one of those almost-not-a-smiles because it was so subtle, but Ronan could see it, mostly in the lack of creases around Adam’s eyes and forehead. 

“Depends on how strong the bond is, though. Maybe he just ionized all of us,” Ronan said just to get Adam to look up at him.

It worked. He chuckled, too, which was an extra bonus. Ronan felt smug as Adam replied, “So right now our relationship is a negative ion, and when Blue and Henry come back, we’ll be positive?”

“Hey, I’m not trying to pick sides, here. And I’m more than just my electrical charge. Don’t make me sound like all I do is bounce back and forth.” Gansey’s outrage had only so much energy behind it, as he was still happily lying in Ronan’s lap. Though, Ronan noticed with increasing distraction, he was fiddling idly with the cuff of Adam’s jeans.

“If the promiscuous shoe fits...” Ronan teased.

Gansey impulsively grabbed Ronan’s knee in retaliation, but it tickled like hell and just made Ronan jump and tip Gansey out of his lap and onto the mattress between Ronan and Adam. Gansey yelped and then giggled, and when all of their laughing died down, he admitted, “Not my smartest move, there, was it?” 

“ _ You _ said it...” Adam said as Ronan snorted in amusement. 

“You also asked for it. Come on, Dick, get your head in the game,” Ronan challenged while chuckling and leaning over him.

“Hmmm... you mean  _ this _ game?” Gansey reached up and grabbed the back of Ronan’s neck and tugged him down for a kiss. 

Ronan resisted for only a split second before he realized what Gansey wanted, then he went willingly, letting Gansey control the kiss, which deepened quickly. 

It had been a day and a half since he’d really kissed Gansey, but in that time he’d kissed Adam so much that it felt like a distant memory — one that he was  _ very _ happy to revisit. Kisses with Gansey were a wholly different experience, but it still took nearly all of Ronan’s attention to adapt from one to the other. 

There was, however, one small part of his attention that was on Adam, and it hoped desperately that the kiss wasn’t making him uncomfortable. Ronan would have pulled away to check if Gansey didn’t still have a solid hold on his nape. Instead, he reached a free hand out to find Adam’s knee, and a moment later, Adam’s hand was on top of his, holding tight.

Gansey did that thing where he made a little pleased sound in the back of his throat while probing gently with the tip of his tongue, and Ronan groaned and squeezed Adam’s knee. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard an intake of breath from above and it threw off his rhythm. He bumped teeth with Gansey and pulled back on a laugh, and Gansey let him go with a chuckle. 

Ronan turned to apologize to Adam but was stopped by the sight of Gansey’s other hand holding onto Adam’s bare ankle, with Adam’s hand wrapped around it. 

A giant spike of white hot jealousy ran him through, leaving a searing fist-sized hole in his gut. When he looked up at Adam with scorching eyes, the betrayal shining out of them like searchlights, Adam looked pale in their light. If Ronan had been able to move, he would have crashed out of Monmouth and into his car to drive ninety miles an hour until sunrise.

Instead, he bit his lips shut and held his breath, knowing full well he had absolutely no right to say anything when he had been making Adam deal with this same situation all week. Didn’t make it hurt any less, though. He clenched his fists, then flopped back onto the bed and let the air out of his screaming lungs as slowly as possible. 

Adam mumbled something and the bed shifted and someone walked away toward the bathroom. It took another minute for Ronan to register Chainsaw’s raucous caw going full blast from the rafters above. 

“Shut up, bird,” He called, but he had no breath support to be heard over the din. Chainsaw’s uproar died down shortly afterward anyway.

The mattress moved again but Ronan, eyes closed, judged it was only Gansey sitting up. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he preempted.

“No, I suppose you don’t.” Gansey knew better than to touch, but he still crawled closer, right over to Ronan’s side. “There are two things you should know, however.”

Ronan sighed deeply, but he rolled onto his side facing Gansey. He kept his eyes closed, though. Needing physical comfort was very different than being ready to face judgment for your actions.

“One, Adam deserves both of our respect and love, always, no matter what. And two, whatever he saw on your face scared him. He just walked away out of self-preservation, not guilt.” 

Another blow to the chest, this one heavy and twisted — cracked ribs and internal bleeding. This one would last a lot longer, just as a bone-deep bruise lasts longer than a surface burn. Acrid shame coated his tongue and made his stomach lurch.

“Fuck.” Ronan made as if to move, though his body was still weak from the adrenaline rush.

Gansey brushed his fingers over Ronan’s forearm. The touch burned; its echo tingled. “Don’t go anywhere near him until you are completely calm, Ronan.” 

His name in Gansey’s mouth sounded like a summons of strength. Of goodness. An affirmation of trust. 

Ronan wept.

The tears welled up silently but without notice, and fell the same way. They fell for Adam’s shitty childhood and for Ronan’s impossible anger, for Gansey’s understanding, and honestly, for Gansey’s complete lack of understanding. Along with the tears, Ronan’s rage and self-hatred and self-doubt welled up, but as the drops fell he did everything in his power to let those other things go, too. He wasn’t good at it, but everything he attempted was with an unmatched ferocity, and this mattered more than most things. To be calm for Adam was paramount. 

Which meant he could be angry at Gansey for just one moment. 

As his tears abated, he growled, then spat,“Why the  _ fuck _ did you touch him?”

Opening his eyes, Ronan saw Gansey’s look of understanding morph into complete incomprehension, and then back again. “Why did you?”

Ronan blinked. “Because he’s my fucking boyfriend and I didn’t want him feeling left out.”

Nodding with a soft smile, Gansey nearly whispered, “That was my reason, too.”

_ Boyfriend trumps bower, _ Ronan thought. He knew he was being ridiculous — possessive and petty and objectifying — to believe he had more right over Adam’s body than Gansey. And yet, he burned. 

“I can’t do this,” he admitted.

“You can dream literally anything into existence. You can figure this out.” Gansey’s smile was deeply unwelcome. Until it wasn’t. 

Ronan scowled as he touched a fingertip to the corner of Gansey’s mouth. “It’s not the same.”

“It is, though. It takes just as much attention and work and energy. And it’s arguably more important work to be doing.”

“I hate your pep talks, Dick,” Ronan said as he cupped Gansey’s face in his hand. 

“You’re welcome,” Gansey called after him as he climbed off the bed and headed to the bathroom.

Chainsaw landed on his shoulder as he reached the door. He knelt down and pressed his forehead to the door before knocking softly. When there was no immediate answer, Chainsaw pecked at the wood and flapped her wings. 

“What.”

Ronan breathed again. “It’s me.” He was listening with his whole being, as if he would be able to hear Adam’s heartbeat. The wood of the door warmed to skin temperature before he could voice the words, “I’m so sorry.”

“What about?” Adam’s voice sounded tired. Ronan had been fearing outright challenge, and now wished he’d gotten it.

_ About everything. About letting you see the rage inside me. About feeling like I have any right to rage — over you, at you, near you. About the disaster casserole that is your asshole boyfriend. Everything, everything. _

He took a deep breath and tried to translate his emotion into words that were constructive. “I have no right to any say in whether and how you and Gansey touch. My anger was unwarranted and misdirected, and I’m  _ really _ sorry I scared you. I was hurt and didn’t wish you any harm, but the possibility that you would ever doubt that makes me...” He swallowed to keep the roiling in his stomach from overflowing. “I’d rather die, Adam.”

The door unlatched and Ronan fell forward slightly when it gave way and opened. He caught himself as Chainsaw fluttered up to the sink and saw Adam sitting against the wall, his knees to his chest, a wary, glassy look in his eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d hurt me. It’s just....” He shrugged. “Old habits.”

Adam apologizing for being traumatized was another sickening twist in the gut _. _ Ronan tipped forward until his forehead was touching the floor at Adam’s feet and whispered his apology over and over like a prayer. 

“I’m actually proud of myself.” Adam touched the crown of Ronan’s skull — four fingertips’ worth of pressure — and Ronan fell silent. Adam took his time. “When my dad... I’d just stand there and take it. I never thought to move out of the way because I knew it would just be worse if I resisted. The fact that I walked away from you means I know it’s not right anymore, that I don’t just expect it.”

Ronan groped for Adam’s foot and held onto his ankle, trying not to let the pain of hearing this wrack his frame too obviously.

Adam’s voice changed from tired and flat, devoid of expression, to something that had a bit of warmth to it. “It also means that I didn’t really think you would do it. H—hit me. Hurt me. I didn’t. That’s why I left.”

The slightest loosening of the iron band around Ronan’s chest allowed him one shallow breath. He was grateful because anything deeper and his whole torso would have shaken with a suppressed sob.  _ He is so much stronger than me. _

“Ro. Sweetheart.” Adam’s fingers trailed down Ronan’s skull to his jaw, then hooked lightly under his chin and lifted. 

Ronan let himself be led. He raised himself up from the floor until he was on his hands and knees facing Adam, and was proud of himself for withstanding his boyfriend’s direct gaze. He knew his own face must have been a complete mess, tear-streaked and ugly as fuck, but Adam smiled softly at him, mostly with his eyes, a tiny bit with one corner of his mouth. 

Without thinking, Ronan crawled forward on the floor until his hands were either side of Adam’s planted feet, and he could rest his forehead, and then his chin on Adam’s knees. 

“Hey, baby.” Adam’s voice was too sweet. Ronan’s gut lurched at making it so Adam had to comfort  _ him _ after what he’d done.

He sniffed and wiped an eye on Adam’s denim-clad knee, then cleared his throat to say, “Hey. You deserve a lot better than that. I’m done prostrating and apologizing now, I just wanna say I’ll do better, I promise.” 

“I know. I’m sorry.” It came out a tight whisper and after, Adam’s lips shut thin and tight, his eyes glistening. 

“Shhh...” Ronan ducked his head and took his time pressing a kiss to each of Adam’s knees. When Adam ran his fingers along his buzzed head, then down past his ear, Ronan turned to press a kiss into his hand. 

“I love you,” he murmured into the fleshy mound on Adam’s palm.

“I know it. Really. I feel it all the time,” Adam pressed both hands to the sides of Ronan’s face and pulled him even closer. “And I love you, too.” 

“Thank God,” Ronan breathed, as he opened his mouth to receive Adam’s kiss.   
  


~~

 

Gansey tried super hard not to be antsy while he waited for Ronan and Adam to work their shit out, but he’d already been pacing for a couple minutes when Blue replied to his SOS text. 

Jane: Everything okay?  
Gansey: Not sure. I think maybe. Hopefully.  
Jane: ??  
Gansey: Did Adam text you in the last 15min?  
Jane: No??  
Jane: What’s happening Gansey?  
Gansey: Growing pains. Everything’s fine.  
Jane: You literally *just* said it wasn’t.  
Jane: Where’s Adam?  
Ganey: In the bathroom. Ronan’s there too, now. There was...  
Ganey: I guess I pushed the envelope without meaning to.  
Jane: Shocker. What. Happened.

Gansey sighed, and had to collect his thoughts. He’d been stupid and he needed to own up to it. He just didn’t know  _ how _ stupid he’d been, which made it difficult to apologize correctly. 

Gansey: Kissed Ro in front of Adam. That was fine.   
Gansey: But I did it while touching Adam, and somehow that wasn’t fine.  
Jane: Touching where?  
Gansey: Ankle. We were all on my bed.   
Jane: So, wait. Adam was fine with Ronan kissing you, but Ronan wasn’t fine with you touching Adam?   
Gansey: Y  
Jane: That boy. :/  
Gansey: Which?  
Jane: Ro  
Gansey: He was scary for a hot second.  
Jane: At Adam???  
Jane: Shit.  
Gansey: Yeah.  
Jane: Fight?  
Gansey: Flight.  
Jane: Oh.... SHIT.  
Gansey: Yeah.  
Jane: Dammit.   
Jane: Is he apologizing?  
Gansey: One assumes that’s what’s happening.  
Jane: Oh, honey. And you’re just waiting to hear?  
Gansey: Y  
Jane: <3 <3 <3 <3   
Jane: Should we call and keep you company?  
Gansey: I don’t want to disturb your evening.  
Jane: I’m calling.

She did, moments later. Gansey would never be able to express how much it helped calm him to hear her voice. 

“Hello, this is the Comfort Station speaking. How can we distract and/or encourage you this evening?”

He smiled hugely as he answered, “Tell me something about Nicaragua.”

“The national bird is the turquoise-browed motmot, or Guardabarranco in Spanish, and it’s so pretty. Green and orange body, blue head and tail. Very fancy. As vain as our Hen.”

“Interesting. Thank you for this enlightening bit of information. How _ is _ our Hen, anyway?”

“In fine fettle.” She giggled. “Did I get that from you? Who even am I these days that I use a phrase like ‘fine fettle’. Y’all rich boys are a bad influence.” 

Gansey chuckled as he heard distant protests from Henry and cogent arguments from Blue as to why she needed to be around him less. They were both so adorable he couldn’t stand it sometimes. “You need to come back to Henrietta and connect with your roots. Hang out with Adam some.”

“Oh... Yeah, I need to do that anyway. You think he’s okay?”

Gansey didn’t mean to sober the conversation so quickly, but he was glad she was such a good friend to Adam. “Yeah, but I can’t check, because they’re either fighting really quietly or fucking, and I need to stay away from anything so intimate between them.”

“Then you definitely need more distraction,” she said, and then promptly went back to talking with Henry, and at a volume that Gansey could no longer follow.

His annoyance disappeared when Henry’s voice was finally brought to the foreground. He spoke as if he was a radio news announcer. “Nicaragua is the largest and poorest country in Central America. The earliest settlers in Nicaragua were related to the Maya and Aztec people. About 42% of the country’s land is used for agriculture. Although outsiders call the local people Nicaraguans, they call themselves Nicas. Many Nicaraguans are descendants of the Africans brought by the British to work as slaves in the country in the 17th century—”

“Are you reading from a facts sheet?” 

“Ten Facts About Nicaragua for Kids. San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua is home to the second largest statue of Jesus in the world.” 

“Should I be offended by the level of sophistication and nuance in this discussion?” Gansey tried to sound affronted, but he couldn’t keep the smile out of his voice.

“Is this new information? If not, who cares what audience it’s meant for, you clearly needed to know it.” Henry was doing that perfect balance of pompous superiority and flaming camp that never failed to make Gansey laugh. 

“Thank you, hon. I’m feeling very edified now.”

“You’re most welcome.” Henry dropped his radio announcer act and added, “How are our boys?”   


“Too jealous and not jealous enough.”

“Let me take a  _ wild guess _ at which is which.” Gansey could practically hear Henry’s eyes roll as he spoke.

“Yeah, but somehow I was still blindsided.”

“Our poor Gansey. Walking into the paths of hurricanes without looking because he expects the windy weather to just act decently and  _ slow down _ for goodness’ sake.” 

“No,” Blue said in the background, “He’s  _ just so happened _ to walk around in the eye of the hurricane his whole life and doesn’t understand how everywhere he goes, everyone else is so damned  _ windblown. _ ” 

“That makes it sound like I’m the one  _ in charge _ of the hurricane and therefore causing all that windblown damage.” Gansey had built up a thick skin to teasing about his cluelessness due to privilege. What he still wasn’t good at dealing with was the implication that he himself caused many of the structural and institutional problems in the country. His kind? Surely. His family? Very likely, especially if you went back a couple generations. He, himself? Not fair.

“If the hurricane represents white, cishet, upper-class, male privilege, then yeah. You wield it well,” Blue replied, with at least some kindness in her voice.

“Only for good, I hope,” Gansey added. “I try, at least. Thanks for keeping me honest.”

“Honesty is Ronan’s job,” Henry cut in. “Wokeness is our specialty — Blue’s when it comes to class and gender, and mine when it comes to race and queerness.” 

“Thank God I’ve got most of my bases covered, then.” Gansey knew he sounded smug, but he was feeling good about all the people he’d chosen to love. 

“And Adam’s is—”

“Yeah. I hate how much Adam has to teach me. I hope he doesn’t feel it as a burden.”

“He loves you,” Blue said without hesitation.

“He wants to  _ be _ you,” Henry added just as quickly. 

“I just want him to be happy,” Gansey sighed. “Whatever it takes.”

“Patience, grasshopper.” If Blue were here with him, she would have a hand in his hair when she said that. Though, actually...

“Isn’t that Henry’s line? Come home before you two fuse into one being, please.”  

“We’d make a pretty amazing fused being, I’ll have you know,” Henry said, though he did so in a very skillful approximation of Blue’s voice. 

Gansey sighed. “I swear I won’t be able to tell you apart, soon.”

“I’m the one with the big—” 

Gansey didn’t hear the end of Henry’s statement because the door to the bathroom opened. 

“Sorry, loves, gotta go. Kisses...”

They said their hurried goodbyes and Gansey hung up, just in time to see Ronan and Adam emerge from the bathroom, somewhat more disheveled than when they’d entered, and in much better moods.

Ronan was gazing fondly at Adam, whose eyes were shining back at him. Gansey let out a very long, heavy breath.

“Hey,” he called sheepishly. “Thought I’d lost you both.”

“Never,” Ronan said, scoffing fondly.

Adam looked over at Gansey, noticed the phone in his hand, and nodded. “All right?” 

“Yeah. Two out of three partners agree that I’m truly, impossibly clueless. Sorry about that.”

“Look. Apologizing is  _ my _ job in this case. Get it, both of you?” Ronan’s brows were menacing, though his voice was abashed. 

“Not exclusively,” Gansey replied, walking up to his side of the bed, as they approached the other side. “I didn’t ask either of you about boundaries before I started including Adam in stuff with you, Ronan, and that wasn’t fair to either of you. I’m sorry about that, and it won’t happen again. Not without consent from both of you.”

“Ronan and I talked about it just now, and I appreciate you wanting to include me, but I don't think it's a good idea. Not like that.” Adam’s voice sounded much too small for his body. Gansey had forgotten how often it used to do that before he moved out of his parents’ house.

“Of course. Whatever you need.” 

Ronan nodded in agreement with Gansey’s statement and squeezed Adam’s hand, adding, “However you need it.”

There was an awkward silence until Adam climbed back onto the bed. Ronan and Gansey following suit directly after.  _ Right Bower, _ Gansey thought, then made himself focus on the issue at hand — which was figuring out how to return to a sense of normalcy. “Also, if y’all wanna just head home I won’t—”

“No, can we just, I dunno. Is it dumb to want to watch more of the show together?”

It was not dumb. It was, in fact, the best possible outcome.


	8. Polarity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ronan’s face yesterday...”
> 
> “He won’t ever do that again. I won’t let him,” Gansey said in a rush.
> 
> “No, don’t. I’m not fragile, so don’t treat me like I am. But I’m still getting better, finding myself underneath layers of — years of — shit. It’s a process, and Ronan has seen some of it, but some stuff is gonna get more visible now, I think. It’s not that I’m jealous or anything. I know I don’t have the right. I just don’t want to lose what I have. That’s all. I’ve waded through some deep shit to get here. I know we all did, but still. I can’t go back. And I can’t lose either of you.”
> 
> “Never,” Gansey nearly choked trying to answer as quickly as he could.
> 
> “You don’t know that,” Adam said with a small shake of his head.

The gentle knock on Gansey’s door the next morning caused a sharp spike in his anxiety, for which he immediately cursed himself. He had no reason to feel so jumpy, but when Adam had texted that he wanted to stop by on his way out of town — without Ronan — everything felt like it was speeding the wrong way down an exit ramp towards the highway. In the dark. Without headlights.

And then Adam was standing before him in Monmouth and things started to move at a more ordinary pace, but only enough for Gansey to feel just a hair slower than was called for. The disconnect reminded him of a lucid dream.

He attempted something close to normal discourse by saying, “I hope you had a good night after you left?”

“Yeah. Thanks for hosting us. Did you get any sleep?”

“Some.” It wasn’t a lie, per se, because the word ‘some’ was loose enough to encompass how much he got without having to specify just how close to none it really was. 

“Good.” Adam squinted at him, more in an assessing way than a disbelieving one, but Gansey didn’t think he looked as wiped out as he felt. 

The silence that followed felt both heavy and full of a flammable gas, and though it was difficult to hold it, the last thing Gansey wanted to do was break it.

The moment Adam did, however, Gansey felt like a heel.

“Ro won’t let me apologize anymore for yesterday but I just...” Adam was looking down at his hands, rubbing at an oil stain on the side of one finger. No, it was ink.  _ Much better.  _ “I do need to say a few things, but I don’t know how to start.”

Gansey sat down on his bed and patted the mattress next to himself. Adam hesitated before moving closer and sitting down. Their knees were mere inches apart, but there was something about the way Adam held himself that meant it was impossible for Gansey to imagine reaching out to touch him right then. Or possibly ever. 

It was strange to realize that the loneliness he’d once again been encased in last night hadn’t broken open even though Adam was there with him. 

“An apology was never necessary. I made a mistake and Ronan reacted poorly. You did nothing wrong.”

Adam shook his head. “I felt a lot of wrong things and I don’t know how to fix that. Not yet, at least.”

Gansey’s heart ached. “Your emotions are valid, Adam. You’re allowed to have them and you don’t have to apologize for them.” 

“No, you don’t—” Adam took a deep breath and looked as though he was trying to start over again. “I don’t know how to get you to understand. You and Ronan belong together. I know this. It’s really great to see something that has needed to happen for so long finally come about. But it also scares the shit out of me, and I don’t know how to...”

Gansey waited, barely breathing, heartbeat fast and light, hands clasped tightly in his lap.

“Ronan’s face yesterday...”

“He won’t ever do that again. I won’t let him,” Gansey said in a rush.

“No, don’t. I’m not fragile, so don’t treat me like I am. But I’m still getting better, finding myself underneath layers of —  _ years  _ of — shit. It’s a process, and Ronan has seen some of it, but some stuff is gonna get more visible now, I think. It’s not that I’m jealous or anything. I know I don’t have the right. I just don’t want to lose what I have. That’s all. I’ve waded through some deep shit to get here. I know we all did, but still. I can’t go back. And I can’t lose either of you.”

“Never,” Gansey nearly choked trying to answer as quickly as he could. 

“You don’t know that,” Adam said with a small shake of his head. He hadn’t looked up from his hands yet.

“Adam,” Gansey said imploringly, and he did get Adam’s eyes for at least a few moments. He smiled and continued, hands out with palms up in front of him. “Ronan and I love you and want to support you however you need us to. Honestly. Whatever you need.”

“I need you to still want me in your lives, even now that you’re together and I’m away and busy and not one of the squad on a daily basis. I need to not feel like Noah.”

“Do you?” Gansey was shocked at the implication. One, because Adam was Adam, not Noah. Each of them held a very separate and distinct place in both the group and Gansey’s heart. And two, because Gansey thought about Noah every damned day. 

“Not yet,” Adam’s smile was flat across and didn’t reach his eyes. It was more of an apology than anything. “But I can see myself fading soon.”

Gansey shook his head in disbelief. “You’re so central to Ronan’s happiness, he’d never—” 

“I’m only half of anything. If that. And I’m fine with that.”

“No. That’s not right.” Gansey’s entire being was rebelling against this thought process. He and Ronan were deeply important to each other, but Adam was on a whole other level, and the connections he shared with Ronan — both the otherworldly ones and the ones built upon human emotions — outclassed Gansey completely. “You two belong together in ways I could never touch.”

“It’s all right. I know my place — have since you first let me in the group.” He looked up at Gansey in a way that nearly stopped his heart. “And you cemented that the night he and I got together, Gansey.”

Everything swam for a moment and Gansey blinked but he would have to wait for his vision to come back fully. Also his breath. “What?” 

“When you told me not to break him, I knew how much he meant to you, and I knew that his wholeness mattered more to you. Maybe because you knew I was already broken. Maybe because you were fortunate enough to never have it cross your mind how easily he could break me.”

“No, no. God, I never...” Gansey still couldn’t get enough air, nor could he swallow right, but his vision had cleared, at least. He looked his magician right in the eye to say, “Adam, no. It was never him over you.  _ Never. _ I knew him longer, I understood his heart better. I know what the force of his desire can accomplish, and how little he needs from reality to bring those desires to fruition.”

Adam nodded. “He wanted me so badly it was hard for me to parse my own desire.”

Gansey couldn’t help pointing at him in triumph. “ _ Exactly. _ And I couldn’t see your heart. I’ve never been able to understand the workings of it. You know how often I fail at loving you the right way. I was worried for both of you, but I’d learned enough to know you’d have bristled even more if I’d expressed concern for you, too.”

“Touché.” Adam had the grace to look a little sheepish, but Gansey didn’t draw any pleasure from it. He just felt sad. He and Adam had never really understood each other, and no matter how much love he felt for this boy — this almost-man, his right and/or left hand — he would never be able to express it in ways Adam could understand. 

Didn’t mean he’d ever stop trying.

“I’m trying to get better at failure. I’m trying to learn from my mistakes and come up with different strategies when the old ones prove ineffectual. It was so much easier when the search I was on was outside of myself, but here we are.” Gansey smiled ruefully at Adam and inched close enough that their knees brushed together. “I want to do better for you. To  _ be  _ better. You deserve more than I’ve been able to manage so far and it frankly appalls me how much I fall short of my goal. Please forgive me.”

Adam sat quietly and stared at him for so long Gansey’s face reddened. He wanted to hide the hot flush behind his hands, or a pillow, or against Adam’s chest, but he didn’t dare move. He deserved Adam’s silent judgment, good or bad. 

“I... forgive you?” Adam sounded bewildered. “Gansey, you don’t owe me... I don’t get...”

“I just love you too much to be doing it so wrong so much of the time.” Gansey reached out but didn’t actually touch Adam’s face, as he was deeply unsure whether it would be thought of as a caress or a violation. 

As he started to let his hand fall back into his lap, Adam caught hold of it and intertwined their fingers. Gansey’s sorrow grew wings and suddenly he was suspended in midair by hope. 

“Well you know how little practice  _ I’ve _ had, so at least we’re both stumbling around blind.” Adam was so close to smiling, Gansey held his breath for the reveal. It didn’t come until Gansey slowly brought their hands up to his mouth and pressed his lips to Adam’s knuckles. 

The smile was truly beautiful as only fully unselfconscious joy can be, but it lasted a mere second before Adam dropped his gaze and gently tugged his hand away. He stared at the model of Henrietta as he spoke, quietly, but without hesitation. “Ronan’s love has always been so fierce and sure, so defiant and outsized, even if he hides a lot of it behind small kindnesses and jokes. I’ll never be able to catch up to him — not necessarily in how I feel, but how I express those feelings. It’ll never come naturally to me. This...” 

He waved the hand Gansey had kissed in an awkward, flapping gesture between their bodies, and swallowed and nodded. “Not knowing how makes more sense. It may be selfish of me, but I’m sure glad someone else has to work at it. Didn’t expect it to be you, though.”

“It’s not from lack of trying, I swear.” Gansey smiled sheepishly at Adam until he looked up and gave Gansey the tiniest of smiles and a slow blink. “I think I need some help, though. And this is one thing I can’t ask of Ronan. It’s unfair to ask someone for advice on how to be a good partner to his own boyfriend.”

“Gansey...” Adam’s voice held a warning, but also something else. It could have been anger or confusion or something halfway between the two, or maybe something edging toward hope. “What are you saying.” 

It wasn’t a question, it was a demand. Coming from Adam, that brought Gansey up short. He needed to back up. Way up. 

“What I’ve been saying since yesterday, but doing a really shitty job of it, is that I want permission to show my love to both of my bowers —  _ all _ my trump cards — as fully and deeply as I feel it for you both. For you all.” He rested a hand on his own knee, palm up, in what he hoped was a no-pressure invitation to connect. “I misjudged yesterday and pushed in a way that sparked Ronan’s jealousy, which I’m still kicking myself for. I should have known he’d still feel protective of his relationship with you.” 

Gansey stopped only because Adam was shaking his head. “No, you didn’t see that look. He was angry that I was inserting myself into the moment between the two of you.”

“What??” Gansey was dumbfounded. That Adam could believe something so wrong, so self-effacing, hurt like a puncture wound deep in Gansey’s chest. “No, Adam. No. Absolutely untrue. He hadn’t figured out how to share you yet, because I didn’t give him the chance to.” Adam’s head hadn’t stopped shaking back and forth. Gansey was desperate for him to understand. “I swear to you. Wasn’t he touching you as well? Please, let me call him and straighten this out if you don’t believe me.”

“ _ No _ . Don’t. I don’t want to hear him lie.” 

Gansey’s face was burning over the misunderstanding but a chill ran down his spine at Adam’s words. “Ronan doesn’t lie, Adam. Least of all to you.” 

There must have been a hint of kingliness in his voice because Adam stopped still and cocked his head slightly to one side — the deaf side — as if listening for something with that ear. 

“All right. You were saying?”

“Yes. I was, well... I was doing a really poor job of asking if maybe you’d want to — God, it sounds so stupid like this.” Gansey wiped both hands down his face and then through his hair, mussing the perfect coif. He took Adam’s hand in both of his and tried again. “I love you. As a friend, yes, but also so much more than that. I can’t be what Ronan is to you, and I wouldn’t dream of trying, but maybe, if you think your love for him and your feelings for me would allow for it, I could...  _ augment _ in some way.” 

Adam’s frown looked angry but that didn’t necessarily mean he was. Until his tone of voice confirmed it. “Is this because you think I’ll feel left out? You don’t have to collect the whole set, Gansey. I’m not fragile, remember.”

Gansey blinked, affronted, and let go of Adam’s hand. “I would never offer you something so trivial, Adam. If you don’t think I’m being sincere, then forget—”

“You’re always sincere, you’re just sometimes offensive without realizing it. I don’t need to feel included.”

“I’m not doing this to  _ include _ you! I fucking—” Gansey interrupted himself to stand up, take a deep breath, and start over more calmly, and with more distance between them. “I need you. Like I do Ronan. Like I need Blue and Henry. I don’t feel whole without all of you, and the past couple months, with the three of you gone, everything has felt wrong until Ronan...”

Gansey didn’t think he was getting through. When Adam was angry he couldn’t always listen well. He let himself drop to his knees in front of Adam and gave him a soft, sheepish smile, resting both his hands over his own heart. “I need my magician, right here.” 

“You have me. You’ve always had me, even when I worked so fucking hard to be my own person.” Adam’s tone bordered on spiteful. “But now you’re asking something of me that I don’t understand, or maybe I can’t give. I dunno. You keep not  _ saying _ anything.” 

“I  _ love _ you, Adam. What more is there to say?”

“Anything that makes any sense! You can’t use ‘love’ to mean ninety different things and expect me to know what you’re saying. You love Blue enough to literally die when she kisses you. You love Henry enough to call him your boyfriend even if you’re not having sex with him. You love  _ my _ boyfriend so much he’s forgotten how to act like a normal human being around you, but you love  _ me _ just enough to cause  _ him _ to rethink this whole thing.”

Gansey’s hackles had raised throughout Adam’s incendiary speech, but the end of it drew him up short. “What _ thing _ ?”

Adam sighed and seemed to crumple in on himself. His voice was a dry husk of what it had been moments before. “Ronan’s rethinking this whole dating both of us thing. I can feel it. And I know I’m going to lose out to you.”

“Has he said that’s what he’s doing?” 

“Not in so many words, but you know him.”

Gansey fully disbelieved this and no longer trusted Adam’s readings of situations after the misunderstandings earlier, but he wouldn’t outright contradict Adam without proof of his own, and he hadn’t talked to Ronan today. Instead he gently asked, “How do you know?”

“Last night he made love to me so beautifully it felt like it was the last time.” 

“Oh, Adam.” 

“I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him.” It was a simple truth, spoken plainly, and it cut Gansey to the quick.

“It will never happen. That boy is the most loyal person I’ve ever met. And yes, he’s loyal to me, but god  _ dammit, _ Adam. He is  _ absolutely _ yours for as long as you’ll have him.” 

Adam shook his head but he didn’t contradict Gansey, and it felt like a tiny success. He wouldn’t look at Gansey as he spoke, though. “I just... I try really hard not to need him, but God  _ damn _ do I want him. As much of him as he’ll give me, anyway. And I love you Gansey, but that doesn’t mean I have any idea how to...” He shook his head again and pressed his lips into a tight line. 

Ganey’s breath caught at the first ‘I love you’ Adam had ever said to him. It meant the world to him to hear it, but in context it was not the triumph he’d been hoping for. Adam was still a long way from being willing to date Gansey, and being able to see the distance yet to be traveled — a distance that might never be crossed — tore a hole in Gansey’s heart. 

Softy, resignedly, he said, “I can’t take it back. And I can’t stop feeling how I feel. But I don’t have to give you something you don’t want just because it makes me feel good. So just let me know what’s okay and what you don’t want, and I’ll adjust accordingly.”

He was still on his knees in front of Adam and was aching to touch him, but he’d _ just  _ said he’d follow Adam’s lead. The poor boy looked so lost inside his head, though, and if grounding him physically in the world worked when he scryed, Gansey wondered if it would work at times like these. 

He didn’t get a chance to offer because Adam was up on his feet a moment later, one hand on the back of his own head, eyes everywhere but on Gansey. “I think I’d better leave.”

Gansey wouldn’t beg, but he had to clench his jaw tightly to keep from trying. He followed Adam to the door and said the only thing that was left for him to say. “Please get home safe.”

Adam nodded and briefly touched Gansey’s shoulder before walking out. It felt like a final goodbye. Gansey nearly wept.

Instead, not a minute after watching Adam’s car pull away, Gansey was in the Pig on the way to the Barns.

 

~~   
  


Losing the fight against anger either happened in slow motion or all at once. At the moment it was like one of those dreams where running feels like dragging your feet through knee-deep sand. Ronan’s heart and breath were already racing and his skin was on fire, but his mind was lagging on the reasons why. 

Adam had gone to Monmouth to see Gansey before he left. There should have been nothing wrong with that. But everything in Ronan was certain  _ something _ was really not right. He couldn’t decide whether he was worried about Adam or Gansey, or even what it was that he had to worry about. 

He’d already talked himself out of the idiotic worry that Adam would cheat on him with Gansey — one, because when he could calm down enough to see reason, he trusted both of them enough to not be that kind of asshole. And two, just yesterday Ronan had straight-up asked Adam if he wanted to involve Gansey in stuff and he’d clearly not wanted to answer, let alone try it. And three, Adam had been in what felt like a deep melancholy when he left. When Adam was sad he didn’t seek comfort, he pulled away, so any offer from Gansey would have been stopped in its tracks. 

But what the hell was Adam feeling sad about? Ronan had thought their night together had gone wonderfully, even after the shitshow of an afternoon. They had both been in good moods by the time they’d left Gansey. At the Barns, Ronan had made a late dinner while Adam watched him, and they’d played with a rambunctious Opal until she’d gone to sleep. Then they’d spent hours in bed together, and Ronan had tried to show Adam exactly how much he meant to him, since words would never be enough. When they’d finally fallen asleep, their limbs and minds were tangled comfortably together. The dream they’d shared wasn’t free of peril, but they’d survived it together and Ronan, at least, had woken up more optimistic than he had in days. 

Adam, however, had seemed the opposite. Not the moment he woke, that had been sleepy and soft and the sort of tender Ronan had always used to scoff at. He now knew how magical those moments were and he treasured the quiet smiles and fuzzy affection of the few minutes between sleep and full wakefulness. 

No, it was after that, at breakfast, that Adam seemed to make up his mind about something that caused him to shut down. Something that made him mournful and must have caused him pain. It was possibly the same thing that brought him to the decision to go see Gansey, and that was when Ronan had started to become anxious. 

And when Adam left the anxiety turned to anger, and now it was approaching fear. 

There was no way Adam would decide he needed to dump Ronan, was there?

Even if Gansey had complicated matters they were working things out, weren’t they? 

Fucking Gansey and his “Love is love is love” bullshit. He’d blurred the lines between friend love and romantic love in a way that Ronan was eternally trying to parse out, and not just for himself.

And then, in the middle of putting away the breakfast dishes, Ronan choked on his own spit as he remembered saying something to Adam about Gansey’s inability to leave well enough alone, and wondered if that was what triggered the melancholy.

Adam wasn’t going to leave Ronan for Gansey, was he? No, that was absurd. Wasn’t it? 

For a second, he thought about calling Blue, but she’d just laugh at his fears. She had too much faith in Gansey — always masked behind gentle criticism, but still. She always believed he could figure things out and make everything right in the end, even though she ended up doing a lot of the smoothing over that made it all work out. 

Ronan was not a smoother. And Adam’s default was to bristle until everything was too rough to handle without gloves on. And Gansey wasn’t always the best at knowing when gloves were necessary. Ronan could usually tell, but he also usually refused to wear them on principle. Unless it was for Adam. 

He’d never wanted  _ anything _ like he’d wanted Adam. The feeling had come upon him slowly and so subtly that he hadn’t even realized it at first. Before he’d even registered the spark he was already aflame. And he’d just had to... live with it. Smoldering just under the surface, and not making a big deal about it. Which had worked for a while, though he’d felt himself getting more bitter and snarky as the months had progressed. 

And then Adam had noticed. And he hadn’t pulled away, he’d just... allowed it. And over time he seemed to sort of blossom in the light of Ronan’s needy gaze, in a way that shouldn’t have made sense but did. And as he opened up, he turned toward Ronan, like a flower to the sun, and it just felt  _ right _ to believe in that magnetism, to let it bring them together in its own time. And then... they were together. 

In Ronan’s mind, their story was the most romantic thing he’d ever witnessed — far better than Gansey and Blue’s, or what he and Gansey had just gone through. As heart-stopping as his first moments with Gansey had felt at the time, Ronan still wasn’t sure he could trust it. Not like he could trust what he had with Adam. 

He and Gansey would be there for each other forever. That wasn’t what was at stake. But this physical thing could end up just a phase they would pass through. It all depended on Gansey’s staying power. And the thinner Gansey spread himself, the less Ronan believed he’d be able to hold on. 

Was that why the idea of Gansey and Adam being together without him produced so much anxiety? 

_ Fucking shit. _

Ronan flopped on the couch and touched the remote for the stereo system. It immediately started playing a song that perfectly fit his fuck-everything-I-should-just-become-a-hermit mood. Opal galloped up from some corner of the house with something that looked suspiciously like carpet in her mouth. He didn’t have the wherewithal to reprimand her though, especially when she climbed onto his chest and played the couch cushions like hand drums along with the beat. Her raucous behavior and the too-loud (just right) music soothed him more than anything else could have.

When Chainsaw started to ‘clean her beak’ (ie nuzzle) on the crown of Ronan’s skull, he relinquished any last scraps of his whirlwind of feelings and let himself drift out of consciousness for a much-needed nap.

 

~~

 

Too short a time later, he woke up to a whole other whirlwind, one he’d never expected to face.

Gansey was in panic mode. Over Adam. 

Ronan was not awake enough for this. “Slow down, asshole. Breathe. Now, what happened?”

Gansey gulped a breath and sat down on the edge of the couch at Ronan’s hip. For a vague second, Ronan wondered how he’d gotten in. “I don’t even know. He just... left. I told him I love him and he just...” His hand made a quick flying gesture away from his body, then dropped to his knee. He looked wrecked. He was possibly vibrating with emotion. He’d definitely driven to the Barns way too fast. 

“You what?” Ronan turned off the music and pulled himself up to sitting, his back against the arm of the couch. It gave him a little distance from Gansey, which at the moment he really needed. 

“Ro, don’t. I didn’t  _ do  _ anything, I just told him. He was really fucking down on himself, saying he didn’t think he had a place in the relationship now that you and I were together — real Old-Adam stuff — and I just couldn’t let him think that I didn’t want him, too.” Gansey shook his head. “I know it wasn’t the best timing, or the best way of going about things, and I really buried the lede to be honest, but...” An uncharacteristically awkward flap of his hand finished his thought.

“Okay... but did it not occur to you that a conversation like that might be pertinent fucking information for  _ me _ ? Like, why would you talk to him about it without telling me first? Or at least at the same time?”

“I wasn’t planning on having that conversation this morning. And then he came in practically singing  _ Jolene  _ at me, and I just...” 

Ronan frowned at the reference but didn’t insult Gansey by pretending he didn’t get it. He was more surprised that Gansey was able to make it than anything. 

A moment later, his dismissive scoff at the whole idea died in his throat as the image of a despondent Adam at the breakfast table flashed before his eyes. “Fucking... How does he not  _ get _ it yet?”

“Good, so you’re not planning on breaking up with him.” It wasn’t framed as a question because Gansey fucking knew better, but the fact that he said it sent a hard chill down Ronan’s spine.

“Does he  _ think _ that? What the _ fuck, _ Gansey?” 

“ _ I _ don’t know. I thought  _ you _ would. For Christ’s sake, what did you  _ say _ to him yesterday?”

“Nothing like that!” Ronan cast his mind back to sitting on the floor of the bathroom at Monmouth, kissing Adam feverishly and promising all sorts of things he’d absolutely be willing to do, and his mouth went dry. “I asked him if he actually wanted to be included in things, like we’d done while kissing in front of him, and...”

“Yeah, he mentioned that and said he wasn’t into it.”

“I know, but I just remembered how I said it.” Ronan stretched his hand out to rest on Gansey’s knee in order to get it to stop shaking the whole damned couch. “I made a stupid joke about making sure we kissed in private if it made him uncomfortable to watch, and if he was on some Old-Adam bullshit — which of course because I’d just fucking triggered him — he could have heard it as me saying that I’d rather kiss you than him.”

“God dammit.”

“And...” Ronan winced at his utter stupidity. “This morning would have made it worse, because at breakfast I made a thoughtless comment about how it was sort of ridiculous but also kinda inevitable that you and I had gotten together, and when he asked if I’d thought he and I getting together was inevitable I laughed and said, ‘No way.’ Which was true because I never thought he’d want me, like, ever. Until he did. And It felt miraculous when he did, of course, but I didn’t say that part because I’m a fucking fool. And the way the rest of it came off was probably what made him sad. And then he went to see you, and... Fucking  _ shit. _ I suck.”

“God, that makes some twisted sense. And it created a perfect storm because he told me he believed your freakout when you saw me touching his ankle was because you were mad he had become a part of a moment you were sharing with me.”

Ronan’s stomach dropped through the floor. “That’s... the fucking opposite of—”

“I  _ know!  _ How horrible is that?”

Ronan’s chest was collapsing — a dead ache of an implosion, a black hole where his heart had been. “After everything...” He bent over and rested his head in his hands, trying to figure out how to breathe again. “In the end, all my love does nothing for him. It can’t even scratch the surface of his self-hatred. Gansey, how...”

Gansey shook his head and trailed his fingers down Ronan’s arm in a surprisingly comforting way. “I don’t know how to fix it. To make him understand. I just don’t.” 

“Me neither, but fuck it.” Ronan looked up at Gansey with his jaw set and his mind made up. “Are you driving or am I?” 

Gansey nodded, his eyes reflecting back to Ronan the force of his own resolve. “I am. We need to get there in one piece.”


	9. Covalence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Recognize yourself?”
> 
> “Me? Am I The Emperor?” Adam nodded again. He’d assumed that of all things was self-evident. Gansey shrugged. “To be honest I only recognized you, Magician.”
> 
> “Who am I again?” Ronan tossed over in a way that sounded like he wasn’t interested. Adam knew even asking the question meant that he was, at least somewhat.
> 
> Adam smirked as he answered, “The High Priestess. She deals in dreaming and the unconscious.”
> 
> “You sure he isn’t The Empress?” Gansey was brushing his thumb against his bottom lip. Adam refused to get distracted, now of all moments, by such a mundane, familiar action. “I thought she was the one who created all things.”
> 
> “Do you really see Ronan as the mom-friend of the group?”
> 
> “I mean, I don’t not...?” Gansey actually sounded serious, until Ronan clocked him with a pillow. “All right, fine,” he laughed, tossing the pillow back onto the bed. “I concede. You’re the dreamer.”
> 
> “The guardian of the unconscious world. Get it right. God.” Ronan spoke in a mocking tone, but Adam could see the squareness of his shoulders and the pride they carried.
> 
> Gansey ignored him, as was only right. “All right, so there we are. Now what?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caveat Reader: this is a super-long chapter and also the end of the story.  
> Chapter ten is a short epilogue. Just, you know, FYI.

Adam shuffled his tarot deck and stared at the patch of sun on the wall across his dorm room.

Thinking had gone offline back at Monmouth, and he was still spinning his wheels — had been the whole car ride back to school. It wasn’t like the fugue state he’d entered in Virginia, or like when his mind had scryed too far away from his body. It wasn’t dissociation or sleep-walking either, he’d just stopped thinking about anything but getting himself back to campus.

And all the while he’d shut his mind off from Gansey’s words and what they meant — for him, for Gansey, for everyone else, too. But now, with his hands on the cards and his eyes on the one spot of brightness in the room, they all came flooding back. Not just the words, but the feelings behind the words, and the ones that had welled up inside of him in response. 

It was  _ a lot.  _

Gansey hadn’t just asked to change the nature of their relationship to each other, but also their relationships with Ronan. So many things between Adam and Ronan would shift with Gansey fully a part of them. So many things had already, since Gansey and Ronan had come to terms with what they were to each other. This wasn’t just about kissing Gansey, with or without Ronan watching (though that also sounded fraught with danger) but about making sure the bonds between them all were solid and could withstand the pressure of all three of them in a relationship together.

And it sounded incredibly difficult. And scary as fuck.

Hence needing guidance from the cards.

It took Adam another few minutes of shuffling to frame a question in his mind, one that was more images and desires and confusions and intentions than words. When he was at this much of a loss, the cards could tell him what he needed to know from the noise in his brain, as long as he was focused on the  _ right _ noise. 

So he focused on the way it felt to fall asleep in Ronan’s arms and the fire in Gansey’s eyes when he spoke of something he was passionate about. He focused on Ronan’s laugh and Gansey’s hugs, the way the two of them bantered back and forth when they were feeling good, and the way their bickering sounded like banter even when they were in foul moods. The care they both took to let Adam know he mattered to them. And the way Adam’s heart filled up when he was able to believe that both of them were always there for him, no matter what.

And then he laid out a ten card spread for himself. 

He sat with the cards for a while, reading from them their take on his situation and the implications of their advice. Sometimes his cards were obscure in their meanings, and sometimes they hit him over the head with the point they were trying to make — which was usually the answer he’d been trying to avoid by asking them a question. 

This spread, however, was one of those that had both clear apparent answers and hidden depths, and it deserved some study and some introspection, which was exactly what Adam had needed from it. 

The challenges were clear, the solutions a bit more obscure but hinted at in the placements of certain cards. His fears were hard to look at on display like this, and the path laid out ahead wasn’t an easy one. Also the outcome was hazy — or maybe Adam was purposefully misreading. 

Either way, he laid out the next three cards in the deck to get a bit more clarity for his own peace of mind. When he turned them over he snorted in amusement and disbelief because they were The Magician, The High priestess, and The Emperor.

_ Well, shit. _

He picked up his cell phone and dialed. The moment the other end picked up, he asked, “Am I hard to love?”

There was only a tiny pause before Blue answered, “No harder than any of the rest of us.”

Adam couldn’t let it go with just that. “But you broke up with me because I was too difficult.”

“I broke up with you because I wasn’t  _ in love _ with you. Doesn’t mean you aren’t loveable.”

“I’m a mess. I have no idea how to love people back. I’m too angry and too odd and I don’t have the... the habit of loving. Or receiving love.” 

“But you’re learning. And I, for the record, love that about you so much.” Her voice was so tender Adam was caught off guard. 

“Well, for the record, I love your willingness to keep loving me, even when I don’t deserve it.”

“You always deserve it, Adam. Don’t say that. What’s all this about?”

He sighed. Half an hour ago, he never would have believed he could talk about what had just happened at Monmouth, but the reading had calmed him, steadied him, helped him find balance again, and Blue was the best listener he’d ever known. Besides, she knew... “Gansey.”

“Oh hell. What now?”

“I don’t even know. I think he tried to convince me to date him? But the conversation was a trainwreck.”

“Oh honey. I’m sorry he’s so bad at things. Did he go into it thinking you’d fall into his arms at the end and everything would be perfect?”

Adam snorted. “Yeah, kinda. There were a lot of passionate speeches that implied he assumed I was already on board.”

“Ugh. We need to break him of this golden boy image of himself, it really gets in the way of him being able to speak to people on their level. Besides, he’s just not that charming.”

“Yeah he is. Normally. But not today.” Adam sighed again and shook his head, though he wasn’t quite sure at whom. 

“Give him time, dear. He’ll grow on you.” It had been a joke between them that they both hadn’t liked Gasney at first blush and their first impressions alone would never have gotten them to where they were these days. So of course she had to remind him of that now.

“Hush, you. I dunno why I called his girlfriend for advice about how to say no to him.”

“You’re going to say no? Why?” She sounded surprised. Not judgmental at all, just shocked.

_ Because Gansey’s too perfect, too unattainable. Too certain that something so complicated can work if they all just try really hard and do their best. Because it’s so damned hard to say no to him anymore, and I want to know I still can. Because I’m not sure I want to be a part of the matched set. Because Gansey always gets whatever he wants. Because I’m not at all used to getting what  _ I _ want. Because if I let this happen, and it makes everything fall apart, I’ll never forgive myself. Because complicating things make that horrific outcome many times more likely. Because, because... _

He stared down at the cards spread out in front of him and sighed. Then he took a deep breath and said, “I dunno. Gotta think about it. And talk to Ro.” 

“Oh, of course. Well I hope you figure out what’s best for the three of you, dear. You deserve all the best things, always.”

Adam wouldn’t contradict her, but that was a hard claim to believe. “Thanks. How are you doing, by the way?”

“Oh, we’re grand! Missing all of you, though.”

“Ditto. Be safe. Ro and I are definitely not qualified to take care of Gansey if you two don’t come home soon.”

Her laugh buoyed his spirits enough to keep his head above water. He was always so grateful for her. 

“Please take care of him — and yourselves — until then, though. Love you!”

“You too. And Henry.”

“Talk soon!”

And then she was gone. 

And Adam was left staring at the outline of what he had to do. He took a picture on his cell for future reference, then tucked the cards back into their deck, leaving the last three right on top, to sit together until the next time he shuffled. 

 

~~

 

Ronan was wound so tightly he could barely walk like a human being. He was caught between a lope and a shamble, fists and jaw clenching over and over, as Gansey led the brisk way through campus, paying attention to dorm names and room numbers, efficient and polite and never moving fast enough for Ronan’s hurtling heart. 

By the time they got to Adam’s room, Ronan was nearly panting, not from exertion but from a combination of anxiety and anticipation. His need to make Adam understand how much he was loved was eating him alive from the inside. 

Gansey glanced over at Ronan before knocking politely on the door and waiting for an answer. Ronan didn’t have time for that bullshit.

“Adam?” Ronan gently tested the doorknob and found it turning in his hand. He opened the door a crack and called softly, “Babe?”

“Ro?” Adam’s voice sounded clear and steady from inside. Ronan swung the door more fully open to see him turned around in his desk chair, face shocked clear of any other emotion. “What are you... Gansey??”

They were both in the threshold, Gansey with a faint blush to his cheeks, thumb brushing his bottom lip, and Ronan with arms crossed, belligerence masking how self-conscious he felt about just showing up like they had the right to impose on Adam’s space. 

“Hey. I know how this looks, but can we just talk for a minute?”

Adam rose out of his chair and motioned them into the room. Gansey courteously closed the door before leaning against the wall. Ronan didn’t know what to do with his hands, or his whole self, and just stood awkwardly in front of Adam, who was frowning, but in a way that looked genuinely confused. “I... You  _ drove  _ here to talk? We couldn’t have done this over the phone?”

“No. We definitely couldn’t.” Gansey’s voice rolled over Ronan’s shoulder in a firm but kindly way, and he found himself untensing a bit. “We needed you to see our faces.”

“When you said what? What is this, exactly?” Adam’s hand strayed to his chest as if his heart were at risk of some threat. Ronan’s thumped painfully in the base of his throat. 

“We came to, well...” He dropped to his knees in front of Adam, hands pressed together as if in prayer. “I need to make you understand how much you mean to me, and I can’t fucking do that over the phone.” 

“I...” Adam’s gaze flicked from Ronan’s face up to Gansey’s and back down. “And Gansey? What’s he doing here?”

“Same thing, to be honest. Just without the kneeling.” Gansey’s voice held a smile, but he wasn’t being funny.

A flicker of gratitude passed over Adam’s face and he gave Gansey one of his smallest, but no less potent, smiles. “I know you guys care, and I appreciate the effort...” 

“No, you don’t get it.” Ronan slowly and gently took hold of one of Adam’s hands, giving him the chance to pull away if he wanted, before pressing his face to it. “You have no idea how much I care. I’d do  _ any fucking thing _ for you.” 

“Honey, you’ve proved that. You were ready to beat my dad to a pulp for me. You would do, and have done, anything for any one of us when we were—”

“No. For  you. _Right now._ This moment. Anything.”

_ Fealty. _  It was the language Ronan knew best, after all. 

Seeming at a loss, Adam glanced back at Gansey again, who moved forward to stand at Ronan’s side. Gansey nodded at Adam, whose jaw set as he planted his feet more firmly. With the most matter-of-fact voice, Adam simply said, “All right. Would you break up with me and just date Gansey?” 

All of Ronan’s breath left him in one burst, as if he’d been punched in the gut. He didn’t have air to respond so he just shook his head. He was vaguely aware of Gansey starting to protest, but Adam just held up his free hand to stop the flow of words. 

“If you would actually do  _ anything _ for me, why wouldn’t you walk away from this when I ask you to?”

The moment Ronan had enough breath to speak he said, “I can’t. I fucking can’t do it. You are everything to m—”   


“You know that’s a lie. Gansey means just as much to you.”

A sharp stab between Ronan’s ribs made him stutter, “It’s— I’m not lying, I swear. You both — there’s no way to separate. I can’t just cut myself in half and give you one side and Gansey the other. You  _ both _ mean everything to me. You’re what I live for. I wouldn’t be here without you. I’m not whole otherwise.”

A muted choking noise came from Gansey. Adam shifted on his feet but continued to look down at Ronan. “You said you’d do  _ anything _ for me. That requires sacrifice.” 

Before Ronan could respond, Gansey said, “He said he’d do anything  _ for _ you. This, what you’ve asked, is not something  _ for _ you. The damage it would cause you if he turned away from you right now... I don’t think you’d recover. Neither of you would, but that’s beside the point. Asking something of him that would put  _ your  _ wellbeing in such peril would mean he was doing something  _ against _ you. Don’t ask him to do such a thing. It’s not right.”

There was a moment where the whole world hung still as Adam looked at Gansey, and then, without looking at Ronan, he said, “Then would you break up with Gansey?”

The words sucked the air out of the room, and Ronan felt like he was floating. He shut his eyes tight, fighting off dizziness, as he managed in a thready voice, “That’s not the answer, love. Gansey makes me a better person. Take him away and I’m so much less. The only thing I want is to be as good for you as possible — for both of you — and to do that right, I need to have  _ both  _ of you with me.”

Another soft noise from Gansey drew Adam’s gaze. The moment he had it, Gansey spoke. “I know this is horrific timing, but... Please.” 

Adam nodded and Gansey took a deep breath before launching into a speech. “I know that what Ronan is saying can be really hard to understand — possibly sounding selfish or greedy. But it’s not. He’s not dividing his love between us, he’s got exponentially more of it because he loves us both.” Adam opened his mouth to answer but Gansey continued. “I know I sound pedantic, I get that. And it sounds shitty that I’m speaking for Ro, but I know — I fucking  _ know _ this. So deeply. This is me with all of you. You, Ronan, Noah, Blue, Henry... Every time I found one of you and you settled into your place in my heart I breathed a deep sigh of relief — one more bit of me was more complete than before. I have never felt so right as when every one of you finally fitted into your correct place, like puzzle pieces, and my heart was finally made whole.”

Ronan had slid into Adam’s desk chair during this speech and was slouched there watching Gansey weave his story around Adam’s head. In the silence that followed he muttered, “Maybe the real quest for Glendower was the friends we made along the way.”

Adam snorted at Ronan’s words and rolled his eyes, which was exactly why he’d said them. 

Gansey didn’t even blink. “No, that’s actually  _ exactly _ it. You know it was Noah who spoke to me of Glendower when I was first dying from the wasps, right? He’s what set me on the trail that eventually led me to each of you. He’s the  _ entire  _ reason, not just that I’m alive today, but that I am a whole person, with all of you to love.” 

Ronan stared at him, impressed. Not with Gansey’s assertion, but with Noah’s foresight. Though maybe it wasn’t foresight when you were dead. Maybe it was just sight. But he thanked God for Noah, either way.

After a moment he added, “That and the fact that the second time you died Cabeswater restitched your entire being back together from scraps.” 

“Not scraps. You. Each of you. Don’t you get it? The treelights gave me a part of each of you to make me a whole human being again. I am quite literally made up of you — my friends. My family. I can’t do this life thing without each of you in it. Not if I’m to continue to be grounded in a human life, as a human person.” He rested a hand on each of their shoulders and added, “And I really don’t want to end up a tree instead of here with you. No matter how willing Blue might be to hug me in that state, I’d miss this too much.”

Gansey motioned for Ronan to stand — and who was he to argue with a king — and then pulled both Adam and Ronan into a group hug. It didn’t take any effort on his part because Ronan had been aching to hold them both, and Adam, for once, seemed like he’d been needing it too. 

In fact, he sighed and just sort of slumped against both Ronan and Gansey, and the two of them worked together to keep him vertical and held close. 

If Ronan had been asked outright what the fuck they were doing driving nearly three hours on a Sunday to his boyfriend’s dorm, he wouldn’t have had a coherent answer a minute ago. But this moment was exactly why they’d come. To help Adam understand this — physically, emotionally, and intellectually, if possible. At that moment they seemed to be one step closer to success.

“I didn’t know any of that,” Adam breathed into the space between their heads. “I guess I should have been able to figure it out, but...”

Gansey’s fingers threaded through the hair on the back of Adam’s head. Ronan knew exactly what that felt like and it eased a tightness within him to watch it happen. “I haven’t been keeping a journal you can page through whenever you feel like it,” Gansey quipped. 

Adam huffed his amusement. He seemed too relaxed and enjoying Gansey’s touch for anything more extensive. Ronan preened, even though he wasn’t the one pleasing Adam at the moment. He realized it didn’t matter who was, as long as his boyfriend felt good, which seemed like another big step. 

Gansey glanced up at Ronan and gave him his best smile — the one that never failed to light a fire in Ronan’s belly because it was his molotov cocktail smile — made of pure mischief and unpredictability, but mostly joy. Utter joy at the miracle of life. 

Ronan grinned like a fiend back at him, then pressed his forehead to Gansey’s temple. The connections between all of them in that moment felt so fucking vital Ronan never wanted to move again. 

Gansey rested his chin on Adam’s shoulder and murmured, “I don’t know what I’d do without each and every one of you.” 

Adam grunted in what sounded like agreement, but Gansey’s fingertips were now clearly kneading the base of his skull, so it could have been coincidental. 

Ronan was about to make a similar noise of assent, but instead he risked shattering the moment by saying, “Well... Noah.”

The second he spoke, Gansey slumped, and Ronan had to quickly adjust his stance to keep both of his partners upright.

“Yeah, fuck. It’s hard to be without him. I know he’s still inside me, but I miss seeing him. I miss talking to him. I miss hearing the echo of his words in my head. I...” Gansey took a deep breath and attempted to hold himself up without Ronan’s support. It only half worked because Adam was only bearing part of his own weight. “I didn’t make this connection until he left us, but Noah’s was the voice in my head for the past seven years. Sort of my imaginary friend that I talked to when I was lonely. I thought of it as Glendower, but it was Noah.”

“Dude.” Ronan half-whispered, wonder in his voice.

“Yeah. It’s so hard now he’s gone.” 

Ronan squeezed Gansey’s waist a little tighter. “You poor patchwork-hearted boy.”

“Don’t, Ro. I know you’ve had to deal with so much more loss, but—”

Ronan’s heart clenched at Gansey’s allusion but he wasn’t going to ruin this moment thinking about losing his parents when he had his chosen family in his literal fucking arms. “I wasn’t teasing.” He kissed Gansey’s cheekbone then nuzzled the hair behind his ear. 

“Why are we still standing?” Adam muttered, as he nudged them toward his narrow bed.

“Can we all fit on that thing?” Gansey sounded deeply skeptical.

“Have a little faith, Dick,” Ronan said, one eyebrow high as he practically picked the others up to dump all of them on the bed. 

Of course Ronan managed to end up underneath Adam and Gansey, but he wasn’t fucking complaining.

“Oof. Jesus, this bed is small. Good thing we like each other,” Gansey said with a shy smile at Adam. 

“Yeah...” Adam reached out his hand and cupped Gansey’s jaw. Gansey turned his head just enough so his lips were against Adam’s his wrist. “It’s okay, you can say the word ‘love’. It won’t scare me off.”

Gansey ducked his head and used Adam’s hand to hide his face. That reaction was so endearing, and Adam’s surprised laugh was so candid, that Ronan’s throat tightened. “Christ, you two. Have you figured your shit out yet?”

“Oh, like you’re Mister Enlightened over here, you green-eyed monster,” Gansey said as he peeked out from behind Adam’s hand to stroke Ronan’s cheek. 

“Get off,” Ronan growled with mock irritability. “I’m not the one who tried to convince someone else’s boyfriend to date him today.” 

“Yeah, well I’m the one who tried to get my boyfriend to break up with both of his boyfriends, one of which was me, so maybe I win for biggest asshole?” Adam stretched up to kiss the underside of Ronan’s jaw. 

He took the gesture as an apology and immediately forgave Adam everything, ever. With a smug eyebrow raise, he countered, “Sure, but I passed the test, so...” 

“Oh man, you so did,” Gansey said with a proud grin. 

“With a key assist,” Ronan said with a grateful smile.

“I didn’t  _ really _ mean it as a test, but...” Adam started.

“Yeah you did,” Ronan said, brushing the hair out of Adam’s eyes. “It’s okay to make sure.”

“I don’t think you’re greedy, I’ve just never believed there could be this much love. But if Gansey can be in love with  _ five _ people...”

“Four,” Ronan corrected.

“Five including Noah, right?” Adam looked at Gansey, who nodded and shrugged. 

“Figured that one out too late...” The pain that crossed his face had Ronan stroking Gansey’s shoulders and neck. When he leaned into the touch, Ronan turned it into an awkwardly angled massage.

“Okay, so... I know I love you guys, but I still can’t imagine how all of us dating like this is supposed to work. All jokes about ionization aside, like...” Adam’s bewildered frown was so sweet and sincere, Ronan just had to kiss it, and then kiss his wrinkled forehead for good measure. He frowned deeper as if Ronan had cut him off and added, “I just need to know  _ how. _ ”

Gansey shrugged. “I guess that’s the next big adventure. That is, if you’re willing to join me in it.” His smile at Adam was beatific. Ronan held his breath for the moment of truth. Hopefully, the last one among many.

Adam paused, then, “Gimme a minute.” 

Ronan let out his breath on a sigh. But the thoughtful cast to Adam’s expression boded well, honestly. Better, Ronan decided, for Adam to come to a well-considered conclusion than anything else, because this one would stick. 

“I did this earlier and it really helped, so...” Adam climbed over both Gansey and Ronan out of the bed. 

Ronan grumbled; Gansey hushed him decorously as they both sat up. When Adam turned around from his desk with his tarot deck in hand, Ronan repented. 

He personally was not a fan of communing with illustrated pieces of paper to help decide one’s fate, but none of the rest of the squad questioned his penchant to pray to saints for help and guidance, so... He was happy Adam had found something to help him work through his thoughts. He still couldn’t help saying, “You’re going to ask the cards if you should date Gansey or not?”

“No,” Adam scoffed. “I think, for this to not blow up in our faces, I need to ask a much bigger question.”

“Have at it,” Gansey said with a welcoming sweep to his arm. He couldn’t help playing host even when not in his own house. “Do you need anything from us?”

Adam settled on the floor of his room with a good amount of empty space in front of him. “Silence, if you would.”

Ronan bit back a retort when Gansey squinted at him and placed his finger against Ronan’s lips. Instead, he kissed the finger with a jauntily cocked eyebrow. Gansey’s lips twitched as he watched Ronan’s mouth, then he winked at Ronan before joining Adam on the floor, all focus. Ronan sprawled back on the bed, hands behind his head, settling in to be ignored by both of his boyfriends for a while. At least he had a good view.

 

~~  
  
  


Adam wasn’t used to an audience for this sort of thing. He preferred scrying alone unless he really needed help with grounding, and he very rarely took his cards out in view of other people. But Ronan wasn’t other people and Gansey was deeply respectful — if not super knowledgeable — of this sort of ritual magic. This meant it was easier than he expected for Adam to close his eyes and forget he wasn’t alone as he centered himself and let his mind and heart summon a question.

A question that was so much larger than what he’d needed answered not even an hour earlier.

The problem with this question was how complex it was. Once again he couldn’t focus solely on his feelings for Gansey because they were thoroughly entwined around his feelings for Ronan, but it wasn’t only that. They were also tangled up with his feelings for Blue and running all through his feelings for Henry. They even colored every one of his feelings for Noah. He could see now that reassessing his relationship with one of the group wasn’t just about how it would affect his relationship with Ronan, because it would have ramifications in his relationships with all of them. Which was intimidating to say the least, as the odds of failure seemed astronomical at the moment.

Once again, in order to frame this question both accurately and thoroughly, he started with a jumble of images and impressions —  the colors and shapes of his desires, his fears. Memories of every one of his friends. Snapshots of the challenges, terrors, and triumphs they’d all faced together. How their love for each other flowed between all of them, and how it changed him as it reached inside of him. What it meant to him to truly love them all, and what expressing that love fully with each of them might look like. And then he checked in with himself to see how ready his heart was to expand in the way he was asking it to. All of this he let flow into the deck while holding it to his chest, as the one question that lay beneath it all clarified and rose to the surface: How. 

_ How do we all love each other as fully as we need to without losing ourselves or each other? _

He’d asked questions around this one before — he’d obviously done so earlier that day — questions that connected tangentially, others that were parallel, even others that were linked to it by obvious questions he already knew the answers to. But this question he’d never tried because it felt too big, too unwieldy, too all-encompassing for a simple spread of tarot cards to reckon with. 

So he decided to come up with a new spread that used as many cards as it took to come to an understanding. 

He laid out the top three cards, placed there earlier, and Gansey made a small noise. 

As he shuffled the rest of the deck, Adam looked up at Gansey and nodded. “Recognize yourself?”

“Me? Am I The Emperor?” Adam nodded again. He’d assumed that of all things was self-evident. Gansey shrugged. “To be honest I only recognized you, Magician.”

“Who am I again?” Ronan tossed over in a way that sounded like he wasn’t interested. Adam knew even asking the question meant that he was, at least somewhat. 

Adam smirked as he answered, “The High Priestess. She deals in dreaming and the unconscious.”

“You sure he isn’t The Empress?” Gansey was brushing his thumb against his bottom lip. Adam refused to get distracted, now of all moments, by such a mundane, familiar action. “I thought she was the one who created all things.”

“Do you really see Ronan as the mom-friend of the group?”

“I mean, I don’t  _ not _ ...?” Gansey actually sounded serious, until Ronan clocked him with a pillow. “All right, fine,” he laughed, tossing the pillow back onto the bed. “I concede. You’re the dreamer.”

“The guardian of the unconscious world. Get it right.  _ God _ .” Ronan spoke in a mocking tone, but Adam could see the squareness of his shoulders and the pride they carried. 

Gansey ignored him, as was only right. “All right, so there  _ we _ are. Now what?”

As he finished up shuffling, Adam pondered the question. “Well, the central concern is with the three of us, so I’ll start here, laying out a ring of intention and outcome cards around each of us, sort of like three ten card spreads. Then we’ll see, I guess.” 

When all thirty cards had been placed, Adam fanned out the deck face down and selected two more cards. They were the Page of Cups and the Queen of Coins.

Ronan snorted. Adam hadn’t been sure he was paying real attention until that moment. “Well, there’s your complications, Gansey.”

“Be nice, Ro,” Adam said, as he made room for two more spreads to be placed near the first three. “Besides, I thought you liked the term ‘partner’ more.”

“Oh... That’s Henry?” Gansey pointed to the Queen of Coins. Adam nodded. “I know Blue, obviously,” Gansey added nodding to the other.

“Yep. Practical nurturing, and intuitive emotion,” Adam said, describing the cards — and the people — in the order Gansey had pointed them out. “They’re a good pair, honestly.” 

Gansey preened slightly at the compliment, even though it was only very indirectly about him, and sat up straighter as he watched Adam lay out a ten card spread for each of them. 

When he was done with that, Adam felt the need to flip over one more card. It was Death.

“Oh, hey Noah,” he said under his breath. 

Gansey flinched at the words then blinked a few times as Adam found a place for that card in the pattern before them. “Couldn’t Noah be the Wheel of Fortune or something? Or even The World?”

“Not in this spread, hon. Sorry.” 

“Maybe if this was a Gansey-centric reading, but it’s not. Just look at it.” Ronan waved dismissively at the cards covering the floor — 56 of them, to be exact — and his meaning was clear. Each of the other individual rings were placed in a circle around Adam’s card ring. 

“I guess that’s only fair, right?” Gansey said thoughtfully, gaze gliding over the whole spread. Adam could tell Gansey wasn’t able to see the intention behind what the cards were saying, and he himself tried not to get bogged down in the details of that until he was sure the spread was finished. Which it clearly wasn’t.

Now he needed connective tissue between each of their individual spreads, and he needed it to help identify all the factors he had to be aware of in order to understand the answer to his question. There were myriad ways of framing those factors, and he attempted to employ all that seemed relevant: past/present/future, mind/body/spirit, thinking/feeling/doing, internal/external/interpersonal, connections/strengths/weaknesses, underlying forces that would help or hinder, paths to take or not take, etc. When he thought he’d covered all the bases he could, he realized he only had two cards left in his hand. He placed one to the left of the whole thing, and one to the right. 

The last two were The Lovers and the Ten of Cups, respectively. 

Adam felt a wave of relief wash over him. Someone whistled low, impressed. 

“Your cup runneth over, babe,” Ronan said, his head and shoulders hanging over the edge of the bed to look at the cards.

All Adam could do was nod. He hadn’t expected such a decisive answer, but he wouldn’t insult the cards by pretending there was any other way of reading them.

Looking over the entire deck’s worth of cards, laid out in approximately five sections, he started to see parallels and connections in surprising places, challenges where he wouldn’t have guessed, advice he never in his life would have tried, and a very clear pattern of the flow of love within the group that travelled directly and undeniably through his own card from every direction. 

He blinked and stood up to get a more complete picture of the spread but it only became clearer. He was deeply loved. He could even see Noah’s love working its way through the spread to him. He had to sit down again to stave off dizziness. 

“Oh.”

“Is that a good ‘oh’?” 

Adam tore his eyes and his focus away from the story of his life spelled out in the cards to look over at whoever had spoken. Both Ronan and Gansey had worried looks on their faces, and Adam remembered they couldn’t see in the cards what he could. 

“Um. Yeah. It is.”

He looked back over the circle of circles and had to admit that what was staring him in the face was every one of the ways each of them loved each other and what could happen if they all tried really hard and did their best.  _ Dammit, Gansey was right. _

He smiled over at his... (boyfriends? partners?) people, with their beautiful and relieved faces, and for the first time in weeks, he felt a tightness in his gut relax. They could do this. It really actually looked possible. A shit-ton of work, but achievable. 

It took him more than an hour to explain the intricacies of the spread to them, elucidating each of their individual spreads and then putting forth theories on how they all fit into the whole. It was a long and involved process because of the convolutions of both the connections between them and the different layers of meaning for the cards and their placements. And then of course each of them had to ask either increasingly more incisive or more imaginative questions (guess whose was whose) until they’d gotten to the point where the hypotheticals they were coming up with had become frankly absurd and had nothing to do with the cards anymore. 

“That’s enough,” he sighed, upon answering Ronan’s tenth question. Doing a whole-deck spread was a lot of work. 

But Gansey was still scribbling notes in one of Adam’s spare notebooks. “Sorry, one sec. Just to be clear on these last two: The Lovers on the left side is the problem — choosing what you value — and the outcome is the Ten of Cups, which is... abundance? Family?”

“Both, yes. Peace and joy and harmony. It’s a really positive card for that spot.”

Gansey glanced up at him with a fiery joy in his eyes and then finished writing something in the notebook before setting it aside.

Ronan was still sprawled across the bed, on his back now with his head hanging over the edge so that he was peering at Adam upside-down. He squinted at Adam in a way that could have been masking a stealthy wink and drawled, “So... what I’m hearing here is that the universe has given us the go-ahead to try this thing.”

“If by ‘thing’ you mean Gansey’s ionization morphing into a fully covalent bond between the three of us, then, well... yeah. I guess so?”

“Don’t sound too eager or anything. Christ,” Gansey said with a nervous laugh. His eyes were bright and his cheekbones were dusted pink with intellectual exertion, and he looked surprisingly vulnerable sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Adam, hands in his lap, fidgeting with his pen. 

The sudden thump of Adam’s heart made him blink, then crack a small smile. All this thinking had left so very little room for feeling. “Hey,” he murmured as he bumped Gansey’s shoulder with his own. “You’re worth making sure this doesn’t end up a damned trainwreck.”

“And look, man. It only took two hours but you totally passed the test,” Ronan said with a shit-eating grin. 

Gansey mimed wiping his brow while blowing out his cheeks, eyes wide. Both Ronan and Adam laughed. 

And it felt like the most natural thing to wrap an arm around Gansey’s neck and pull him in for a quick kiss. 

A soft noise of surprise and a shocked grunt reached his ears at the same moment, and it took him a second to distinguish who had made which one. As Adam pulled away Gansey looked up into this eyes and then down to his mouth, making another soft noise, this one more needy, and Adam only had a split second to catch Ronan’s eye before Gansey kissed him in return, with much more intention. 

Ronan’s eyes had been wide but not scared, the color on his cheeks wasn’t splotchy in anger, nor was the way he bit his lip showing any uncertainty. He’d looked... well, if Adam was being honest with himself, Ronan had looked like he was turned on by what he’d seen, and the realization did shocking things to Adam’s insides when paired with Gansey’s mouth on his. 

After a couple more sweet-hot kisses with palms on jawbones and fingers running through hair, Ronan’s hoarse voice muttered, “Fuck, you’re beautiful.” 

Adam pulled away to look at him with a grateful smile and Gansey turned to ask with a playful lilt, “Him or me?” 

“All of the above,” Ronan replied with a wolfish grin.

Before he could climb off the bed and over to them, Adam said, “Wait your damned turn, Lynch,” and Gansey laughed at Ronan’s faux-shocked face. 

Catching Gansey’s mouth mid-laugh proved to be a fantastic idea, and Adam followed it up with a few others he’d never let himself think about too much, but that he managed to carry off exactly right if Gansey’s reactions were anything to go by. 

When they stopped to catch their breath, Ronan looked to be in quite a bit of pain, but the kind that he secretly really liked. Gansey, the sentimental fool, put him out of his ‘misery’ and climbed onto the bed, tugging Adam along with him. 

Laying down directly on top of Ronan caused him to groan, but Adam took it as only half pain and the other half pleasure. It didn’t take much to make Ronan happy when all was said and done. It took a little bit more to get him to show it, and even more to admit it, but Adam and Gansey together were definitely up to the challenge. 

In fact, Adam was pretty sure that when the two of them joined forces to make Ronan feel loved, they quite possibly made him the happiest asshole in the known universe. And when Ronan and Gansey teamed up to shower Adam with love, it was so overwhelming tears came to his eyes. And when Gansey, their patchwork prince, felt the love of Ronan and Adam pouring over him, he looked more fully and completely contented than Adam had thought possible. 

It was sometimes awkward with three, and sometimes the most glorious thing. But the more time they spent touching and kissing and talking about what they needed and wanted, the more solid and secure it felt to have all of them together at once. 

Gansey was in his element, obviously, and Ronan followed his lead with enthusiasm, and Adam kept them all honest about how it all felt and what it meant. And as they lay there together long into the evening, entangled and satisfied, they promised to take the time they needed to ensure that it always felt like this — figuring things out together, and making sure everyone was okay with what happened between them.

And without registering how it happened, it was suddenly way too late for the fact that Adam had gotten very little sleep all weekend and had to get up for an eight o’clock class in the morning. “All right. I love you but I’m exhausted. Either drive home or borrow some pajamas because I’m going to sleep now, with or without you.”

Ronan and Gansey looked at each other and then at Adam, and as if on cue they both shucked off the last of their clothes. Adam facepalmed and got up to find them each a pair of sweatpants. 

When they were all three tucked snugly into bed, Adam said, “Who could have believed when we woke up this morning, that this would be where we’d end up?” 

Tentatively, Gansey raised his hand, which made Ronan cackle. “I mean, not necessarily in this bed, but I’ve been hoping... I’ve fallen asleep to this image for much longer than I care to admit.” 

Ronan shook his head. “I wasn’t even ready for this six hours ago. Granted, this situation is a lot easier to swallow than one where I’m not in the room. That might still take a while.” He shrugged. “Sorry not sorry.” 

Brushing his lips along Ronan’s jaw, Adam murmured, “I don’t mind. Gansey might, but I like this too much to care.” With a free hand he cupped Gansey’s neck.

“Nope. I’m happy as a clam,” Gansey said, turning his head to kiss Adam’s forearm. “Unless... Is it still okay if Ronan and I share a bed sometimes?” 

Adam’s heart pounded, but in a much less painful way than it used to. This whole poly thing really did get easier as you went, especially if everyone  _ talked _ about stuff. “Only if you send me pics,” he joked.

“Deal,” Gansey responded, delighted. Adam was suddenly certain he’d get a goodnight pic of his two boyfriends together every time they shared a bed for the rest of the semester. It was a shockingly comforting realization.


	10. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An amused snort escaped Ronan and he said, “It’s been a long time, but like, how much could those two have actually changed in two months?”
> 
> “You’d be surprised,” Gansey muttered, insecurity crawling up his throat.
> 
> “Those two?” Ronan scoffed. Adam made an amused, agreeing sort of noise in the back seat. Ronan glanced back at him, adding, “Right? It’ll be like old times in ten minutes, tops.”
> 
> “So, y’all will be back to flirting and griping and swearing at each other, and I’ll be back to being den mother again?”
> 
> “Bingo,” Adam said, just as Ronan muttered, “I don’t flirt.”
> 
> Gansey laughed. It came out a little hysterically.

If he hadn’t been driving the suburban, Gansey would have been bouncing in his seat. As it was, his fingers tapped the steering wheel in such a frenetic way that Ronan turned the music up for the third time. Adam grumbled about the volume in the back seat and Ronan sighed and started fiddling with the balance on the speakers. But of course he didn’t turn the volume back down. 

Gansey had been keyed up all day, but what could he do when two of his partners were finally coming home today — as in, right now. They were, in fact, on the plane and would be landing in the States in about half an hour. And Gansey hadn’t been able to touch them for two and a half months. Ten weeks to the day. 

It had been a tough ten weeks. 

He’d tried not to let Ronan and Adam see how hard it had been, because it was so amazing to finally be able to touch them both like he wanted to, but Blue and Henry were different. And he missed that difference just as much, no matter how many nights he shared a bed with one or both of these boys. The comfort of Ronan’s body and mouth had definitely kept him from falling apart these last couple weeks, and he was so grateful for that, but he couldn’t wait to hug Henry and Blue, together and separately. And kiss them, together and separately. And share his bed with them. 

...And all the other things they’d gotten up to over the summer months. 

And best of all, he’d soon have all the (living) pieces of his patchwork heart in the same place at the same time. It would be the first time he’d had that since he’d started dating all four of them. At that thought, his pulse thumped hard in his throat to the rhythm of Ronan’s music. 

_ Would it be a delight or a disaster?  _

Hard to know, really. They all worked well together when on a quest and/or fearing for their lives, but the humdrum of everyday poly living — the communication, the jealousy, the scheduling, the sharing... 

But he wanted this more than he’d ever wanted anything, save Glendower. Maybe him included, honestly. 

He glanced over at Ronan who had now started tapping his fingers on his knee to the rhythm of the song, then looked in his rear view at Adam, slouched with his head against the window. Gansey marvelled at the beauty of Adam’s angular face, the way he finally inhabited his skin like he was the rightful owner of his body, the tiny lovebite on his neck that neither Ronan or Gansey wanted him to know about. Gansey wasn’t even sure which of them had given it. 

For the next minute Gansey divided his attention between the road and Adam’s visage in the mirror, hoping to catch his eye. Finally he had to make a small frustrated sound to grab Adam’s attention and give him a reflected smile. 

Adam blinked and smiled softly back — an unselfconscious smile full of fondness, sweet enough to make Gansey a bit dizzy. His own smile widened such that when Ronan shifted in his seat and pulled Gansey’s attention, he ended up beaming at Ronan’s questioning grin.

“Ready?”

The question woke the storm of butterflies in Gansey’s stomach and he nearly lost his breath. 

As he inhaled, Ronan bumped his knee against the gear shift Gansey held onto out of habit. Gansey loosened his hold and the whiteness of his knuckles receded. He nodded, but also sort of shook his head, until he was basically inscribing a circle with his chin and also shrugging. 

An amused snort escaped Ronan and he said, “It’s been a long time, but like, how much could those two have actually changed in two months?”

“You’d be surprised,” Gansey muttered, insecurity crawling up his throat.

“ _ Those two?”  _ Ronan scoffed. Adam made an amused, agreeing sort of noise in the back seat. Ronan glanced back at him, adding, “Right? It’ll be like old times in ten minutes, tops.”

“So, y’all will be back to flirting and griping and swearing at each other, and I’ll be back to being den mother again?”

“Bingo,” Adam said, just as Ronan muttered, “I don’t _ flirt. _ ”

Gansey laughed. It came out a little hysterically.

His cabinet was a perfect storm of personalities that he managed to stay in the eye of, at least most of the time. He couldn’t function optimally without all of the pieces of his heart, but he feared the recent shift in balance would jeopardize the equilibrium they’d found, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to fix it if things went off-kilter. 

Adam’s hand snaked over Gansey’s shoulder and squeezed the muscle where he held all his tension. He gasped softly then breathed into it, trying to keep his eyes on the road. 

It was still a new revelation that Adam nearly always knew exactly where and how to touch him for maximum effect. He was so extremely grateful that Adam had agreed to this mad experiment that allowed the two of them to explore a level of intimacy that Gansey had yearned for — and not just the physical part of it. Being  _ known _ like this was the most satisfying of all, really.

“We all love you, Gansey. That counts for  _ a lot, _ ” Adam murmured near his ear.

Gansey sighed loudly, not meaning to be dramatic but probably ending up that way anyway. “Thank God I found you all. Or maybe thank Glendower.” 

“How about Noah,” Ronan said.

“Or maybe the ley line,” Adam added.

Gansey nodded. “I hereby thank all of the above.”

Adam gave his shoulder one last squeeze then leaned back in his seat. Ronan bumped the gear shift again with a little, sideways smile. The tightness in Gansey’s chest eased as he realized he wasn’t going to have to fix anything — every one of his partners was perfect, and they all were just as ready to make this thing work as he was. 

What other bit of hope could he possibly ask for but that?

Ronan turned the music up to the level of Gansey’s anticipation-nerves-excitement, as they flew down the highway towards the airport exit and their next big adventure.

_ “Excelsior!”  _ Gansey hissed under his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic should have been called: How To Build A Polycule (Or how not to) 
> 
> Thanks to everyone reading and commenting, you are all so lovely. I'll respond soon, I promise. 
> 
> The gangsey as an OT5 (or OT6 including Noah) is really fucking important to me and I'm so glad you all enjoyed this coming together of all of them that I worked on for a long time.
> 
> Now the Patchwork-hearted boy and his polycule are out in the world for you and I'm so very glad of it.
> 
> Thanks again to Chu for the final nudge. <3


End file.
